I am really behind on sharing my customers’ quilts, so I am going to try to get as many of them posted today as possible.  I apologize up front for bombarding you with all the eye candy.  😉

Judy’s family reunion is later this month, I think.  I cannot believe how much Judy has gotten done this past year.  She has been our quilt guild’s boutique chairperson for the booth the guild is having at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June.  You can find out more about the quilt festival here.  They’ve got a really cute cinch bag for sale for only $8!  You can find that here.  Anyhow, I digress… Judy has been working on 1,000 kits for guild members to make stuff from to sell in the booth.  She’s come up with tons of ideas for little and big items and has been cutting, gathering, arranging, distributing over and over again amidst all the other things she’s had going on in her life  I have no idea how she’s survived this past year.  I don’t ever want to have to follow in her footsteps!

On top of all that, she managed to get the family quilt done.  She auctions the quilts off at the family reunion to raise money for family members in need.  Isn’t that awesome?  And, to add to her stress, I started something baaaaad when I quilted her family quilt last year.  I stitched names and dates into it.  So, this year, she machine embroidered names and dates into nearly all the blocks, I think.  She said it took her for. ever!  And, I believe it!

First off, let’s look at the whole quilt.  I LOVE how Judy made this a scrappy quilt with all the different colors and fabrics, yet she pulled the colors together in each of the blocks and then, “pow!”, added them out into the checkerboard border.  She really pulled this off well, in my humble opinion.

Now, as you look at the picture above, I want to show you the parts where she embroidered the names and dates.  Here’s a close-up of the embroidery – it’s in white, so it is subtle and doesn’t over power the rest of the quilt.  Do you see it in the strip across the middle of this picture below?

Here’s another view where you can see the embroidered strips above and below each block.

And, to put it all into perspective, here is a shot of it draped across my quilting machine’s frame.  Now, go back up to the top of this post and look at the full view of the quilt.  Impressive, huh?  Each time I look at it, I am amazed that Judy was able to pull together all she has this year.  I think the colors, the stars, the Irish Chain and the checkerboard border are all symbolic of this past year for Judy.  She’s had some jewels in her life, it’s been colorful and sometimes probably drastic and dramatic, she’s had some chains, she’s kept them in her reign (with the solid strip between the blocks and the border) while dealing with the stepping stones (checkerboard border) around her life.

Okay, so after all that, this is what I contributed, trying to give it some elegance while staying out of the way… don’t expect much.  LOL!

Well… it kind of goes with the paisley backing of the quilt.  <laughing again>