Cousin Sharon married, so Aunt Joyce decided to make her a quilt. This is a quilt project Tata handed Aunt Joyce when she was first empty nesting. Many years later Aunt Joyce completed it. Because Aunt Joyce’s eyesight is not the best, the quilt had areas to mend and because it was paper pieced, there was a lot of paper to remove. Though, after it was finished, the quilt is a beauty! I hope Sharon enjoys using it.
The quilt is king bed sized so it was a lot to quilt and a bit unwieldy to handle. However, it quilted beautifully. I even rotated it so I could quilt it in both directions. Aunt Joyce sent some fabric she’d purchased for drapes for the back that Mother pronounced too heavy. When I told Aunt Joyce that Mother vetoed her backing fabric, Aunt Joyce gave me permission to change it. Apparently the big sister card still works after all these years! Mother is 93 and Aunt Joyce is 87! And the backing I selected, wide bleached muslin quilted beautifully. Hooray for the big sister card!
Aunt Joyce sent fabric for the borders. The borders squared up the quilt and really made it possible to longarm it. Frances was here and helped with measuring and figuring out how to do the borders. Thank-you Frances!
- 99 1/2” x 99 1/2" King bed sized
- Quilted in vertical and horizontal parallel waves. Remounted the quilt to achieve this feat! Used off-white thread “Pearl White” Omni brand 100% polyester from Superior Threads. Free form quilting. 12 bobbins. Quilting by Patty.
- Backing: Wide bleached muslin.
- Batting: 100% polyester “Quilter Dream Puff”. I thought the quilt needed more puff, that’s why I used a polyester batting with more loft (3/4”)
- Binding: Solid royal blue fabric, cut on the bias. Aunt Joyce wanted bias binding to wear better. I hope I did a good enough job with the mending of the top so the quilt will live up to Aunt Joyce’s expectations of wearability. Some of the fabrics in the quilt don’t look that sturdy. One part of a block just disintegrated when I was looking at it, so I had to re-do several pieces with new fabric. Because the binding is bias and the quilt is so big I had to turn the binding by hand. I’m a very slow hand sewer so the binding process took many days (10).
- Pattern: Pattern given by Aunt Ruby to Tata who handed it down to Aunt Joyce.
- Piecing by Aunt Joyce using paper piecing on newsprint type paper.
- Pinned into frame May 16, 2023. Quilting on long arm quilter May 18-20, 2023. Turned and remounted quilt May 22, 2023. Quilted the other direction May 22-24, 2023 (Patty).
- Binding by Patty
- QC by Mother
Before Quilting
Mother QC’ing the Quilt
The Rabbit Signature
Backing and Binding
