Show and Tell…Quilts made by YOU

Over a year ago I spoke with Carolyn on the phone.  I tried to help her make her first quilt with a few suggestions and such.  I received an email from her with pictures of the quilt she made and I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you!

Here is the email I received from her:

Hi Sarah,

As you can see from the date of your message to me (2/5/10), you helped me by answering some questions I had about making my first quilt!  I had bought some charm packs of California Dreamin’ from your store and wanted to make a quilt for my sister’s birthday.  You were kind enough to answer some of my questions over the phone, and then you sent me two pictures as suggestions of what I could do with the charm packs.

I am proud and excited to tell you that I finally finished the quilt!!  I really wanted to show you what I did.  (I think two of the pictures are sideways but I don’t know how to rotate them on here!)  I added a white border around the charm square and then alternated a pink or green border around that.  I also had bought material for the backing before I really knew what I was doing.  When it was time to do the back, I found out it was only 42″ wide and the quilt was 54″ wide.  So I had to make a border around the backing.

I also tried to stipple the quilt.  I had taken a class on free motion quilting, but hadn’t been practicing.  So, 30 minutes of stippling one section, ended up being 3 DAYS of ripping it out!!  I then went with the grid pattern.  I used 1″ painters tape and followed the line.  After about 5 rows of that, I thought 1″ was too small so I ripped THAT out and used the 1.5″ tape.  I used variegated quilting thread that matched the colors perfectly.  My other sister noticed that right away which made me happy!   I had no idea the quilting part would be so time consuming!

I made my own binding and followed your tutorial and that went fine.  I also made a label with my embroidery machine.  (I’m also new to that so it wasn’t the best!)

I presented it to my sister this weekend and she absolutely loved it!  It was only one year, one month and a few weeks passed her birthday!

So THANK YOU so much for all your help and guidance.  Your encouragement help give me courage to finish my very first quilt!!

Sincerely,

Carolyn

I can NOT even express how much it means to us, to hear back from you all.  The stories, successes and failures {which always turn out to be  successes too}  are what keeps us going.  We appreciate all of you.  You are the reason why we are doing what we are doing.

Have  a wonderful day.

~Sarah