Once Upon a Time.............

Once Upon a time Our oldest child got married.

I had a few months before the wedding and I started a quilt.

It was fun, my first really pieced large quilt.

I liked to applique quilts so did very little piecing.

I bought a lot of new stuff thinking it would make this quilt easier to make.

I tried the rotary cutter and cut a lot of misshapen pieces.

I had to use them, fabric was expensive even then!

A month was left and the Wedding quilt was pieced and ready to be quilted.

I had never done any machine quilting so I studied.

I started working from the middle

I did 1/4 of the quilt on the machine.

I hated it!

Machine quilting killed the best part of the quilt.

The wedding came and I still was un-picking the machine stitches.

Then I began what I know best.....

I started hand quilting in 2001 7 months after the wedding

I finished hand quilting in Sept. 2008!

I need to celebrate!

I know I will never quilt something this big again so it is a proud moment for me.

My wrists got so bad at times I would have to put the quilt down for 6 months at a time and then pick it up again.

Betty Miller got some of her quilting friends together to work the quilt for an afternoon.

Some of the stitches are not my own.

But most are and they are interesting.

I taught people walking by at fair how to quilt by lifting the heavy quilt up so they could see. Not the best way to stitch

I quilted in horrible light at times

I used a magnifier at times

The quilt went to Whistler several years of our vacation

I let two different friends work on it at fair when they had forgotten their projects for their appointed demo time.

I put the quilt in and out of the frame, in and out of big plastic bags,

and finally bought a lap frame to speed things along

I kept shooing cats away who wanted a cozy lap.

I washed the finished quilt two times for good measure.

It did just as I hoped, the quilted stitches hugged the quilt and it is beautiful

so for all it's imperfections it is perfect.

Made with tons of love

years of devotion

and a bit of my own blood! sorry about the stain I tried to cover it with the label those little needles can be sharp!

Hope you can wrap yourselves and your cute family in your brand new 8 year old wedding quilt!

Lots of love

mom