I have been rewarding my accomplishments with a treat, a sewing project.  My last sewing project was originally going to be making matching shorts and jumper for Paul & Hannah.  Then, I remembered a big sewing project I started over 8 years ago…and it has been waiting and waiting for me to finish it.  I decided to drag that one forth from the closet and get it done before our new baby came.

Last Tuesday night, thanks to Andrew taking over the kids for a hour or so after supper, I completed that 8-year-long project.  And this is what it was.

It was a friendship quilt for my sister Rachel, originally to be presented for her 25th birthday back in May of ‘03.  So much happened in my life from the time I planned and started the quilt in 2002 until the spring of 2003, that there was no way I could get it done in time for her birthday that year (I got married in June).  I asked a neighbor lady, who is an excellent seamstress, to sew the top together for me, and then we gave Rachel the sewn-together top on her 25th birthday.  I planned to complete the quilt later.  (Obviously, later turned out to be much later than I ever thought.)

There were more patches than would fit in the quilt, so I made those into pillows.

At the time when I purchased the material for the quilt, I made the mistake of not buying enough of the background color fabric for the back side of the quilt too.  (I thought I would come back later and get it when I was ready to do the back.  Ha!)  Now, there was nothing to remotely match that medium blue color, so I finally settled on a very dark blue quilt backing.  When I was getting ready to finish the edges, I got the bright idea to get some white piping, and then put a little blue strip on each side, and then insert that into the edge seam of the quilt.  Here’s a close-up of how that turned out.

It seems pretty simple to do that, until you figure 11 yards of white piping, and for two blue sides, that’s 22 yards of blue strips to cut measure and cut out, iron in half, and sew to the piping, then pinned into the edge, and then sewn in place.  Yeah, it took an entire day.

I must include here that this quilt is knotted, not quilted.  (I do know my limits!)  When my neighbor, Mrs. Estes, heard that I was going to knot a quilt, she repeatedly insisted that I let her put it in her quilt frame and then just come over to her basement and knot whenever I had an hour or two.  That sounded easier than me trying to do it without any type of quilting frame!  I gave her the batting, the backing, and the top, and then she called me, I think on a Friday, and said it was in the frame and ready.  The kids and I loaded up a few books and toys and headed over there Saturday afternoon.  Lo and behold!  She had not only put it in the frame, but has started knotting on it too.  I’m sure she must have had 1/4 to 1/3 of it knotted.  She and I stood around that frame and knotted and the kids played with all the wonderful toys in her basement.  In a little under 4 hours, we had the whole thing knotted, and she showed me how to finish the edges, and I brought it home!  I was so surprised and pleased to be moving along so quickly on this project.  I expected to spend every afternoon knotting for at least a week before I got it done.

Here are a few of the patches in the quilt.

The patch I did.

My sister Katie’s patch.

My sister Lucy’s patch

My mom’s patch.

If you are interested in seeing all the patches in close-up photos, here’s a link to them on Flickr.

I finished it on a Tuesday evening.  On Friday of last week, Rachel stopped by here after work.  I had asked her to stop to pick up a late birthday present.  (She later told me that Ted, her husband, thought it was might odd, and asked her if it was a birthday present for this year or next year, since the end of July is not near her birthday.  She told him she didn’t know, but if somebody called and asked her to come get a birthday present, she was going.)  Here are a few pictures of her opening it.  She admitted she had forgotten all about it.  I was tickled to surprise her.  I’m sure whenever she did think of it, she wouldn’t expect me to finish it until I was 105 years old.

Well, that’s my latest sewing project.  I highly doubt I will get any more sewing done before our new baby is born.  I have put away the iron and ironing board and closed up my sewing machine.  If I get the rest of the stuff on my lists accomplished and still have a little time, I might start another sewing project.  However, I’m not expecting that to happen.  I am satisfied, very satisfied, to have completed this sewing project.

(Now everyone knows how human I am and how extremely late I can be at finishing what I start.  I will humbly admit that there was another whole string of sewing projects I started many moons ago, as in close to 20 years ago, and when I was cleaning the basement, they didn’t make the cut.  I discarded them.  I had cut out aprons to sew for my sisters, and I was planning to embroider the pockets, and even started on that.  My life is in an entirely different stage now than when I was 13.  I need the room in the basement more than I need to hang onto old sewing projects that will never get top-priority status any more in this life of mine.  Can I add that the fabric I was using was very ugly?  I believe it happened to be on a really good sale at the time, and that’s the sole reason I got it for the aprons.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.