In late November I was asked to do a special quilt for a women's granddaughter. She is elderly and her eyesight is failing, so she could no longer quilt her own quilts. That and her mid-arm set-up was broken. She had been calling around trying to find someone to quilt her quilt for her, but people were either not interested or never called her back.
What made this quilt special to her, was that her granddaughter brought her a bunch of misc. t-shirts, swimsuits, a girl guide sashing and vest and asked her to do something with it. Her granddaughter is in her late teens. She really wanted to make her granddaughter happy.
This woman, now my customer, cut up all the various items and started to applique them onto a yellow background material. The quilt was to fit a twin bed. The top was set to read the Girl Guide group name with the sashing cut in half with half facing/pointing up and the other half facing down, so the badges would face in the right direction. She even added iron on words to spell Girl Guides of Canada. She sewed on the background fabric for the sides to fall down the side of the bed. On these pieces, she added the t-shirts, shorts and swimsuits with labels facing upright.
She gave me this top with a flannel backing fabric and asked me to just quilt it with stippling. I would normally do what the customer asked for, but in this case there was sooooo much background fabric, that I couldn't just stipple it. Instead, I asked her if she would be ok, if I did some sort of grid design on it. I drew out what I was thinking and she thought it was great.
Above is a section where I started the grid work. I used the side seams as my guide and started with an echo line to define my grid area, and on the side panels, between the appliqued pieces I did some stippling. Below is a picture of the echo line with one half grid work and the other half stippling. You can also see the strap sewn into the seam of the two sides that is part of a t-shirt/camisole.
She gave me this quilt with instructions that there was NO rush, that she was just very happy that she found someone to do it for her. I told her that I did have other work that did have deadlines, as we were approaching Christmas, but she said again there was no rush.
Well, wouldn't you know it, she called me a week before Christmas and asks me how it was going and when I thought I might have her quilt quilted, as she had decided or hoped that she could give her granddaughter the quilt for Christmas....lol. Never fails....
As it so happened, I had just loaded the top on the longarm the day before and was waiting for some time during my Christmas holiday to get started on it. Because it was almost Christmas, I was very busy with shopping, cleaning, finishing the decorations, coordinating everything and dropping off other customer quilts. I tell you it was crazy around here! BUT add to that this quilt top that I now felt obligated to at least try and get done, before Christmas.
I worked on it daily for a couple or a few hours each night, until 11:00 pm most nights, after my full time job (who were asking for overtime due to the busy season...I did that too), plus trying to finish everything here at home. Again I will tell you it was crazy around here....very crazy.
Christmas this year was on Tuesday. Keep in mind too that even when the quilt top is quilted there is still the trimming and the binding to attach. She called me again on the Thursday evening, asking if there was a chance it would be done. I responded with, there was still a fair amount of work left, but that I felt strongly I would be able to deliver it to her, on the way to my Mother's house to finish a few things there, on Saturday afternoon/early evening. She was so happy. This would have left her with Sunday and Monday to put the binding on.
I worked on it, burning the midnight oil, as they say, and finished the quilting Friday evening (really it was the Saturday in the wee hours of the morning, but who's counting....). I went to bed and in the regular hours of the morning, I trimmed the quilt, checked it over and took the time to bury all my starts and stops. By afternoon I was finally done. Wow!!! That was tight!
I prefer not to have that happen again! But I am sure it won't be the last time.....lol.
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