A 100th birthday present

My mom and I finished the memory quilt in time for my grandmother's 100th birthday party. I did the machine applique and quilting and mom stayed up late to do the binding.

I decided to FMQ a meander in all of the white space - I did experiment with a few options, but this was the easiest and most effective. I had some grief with my mom's machine and fussed around with different thread options, but managed to get it done without having any tantrums. I mean no disrespect to all of you Pfaff-lovers out there, but my mom needs to get rid of hers. Maybe a new Juki for Christmas?

The quilt received a lot of attention at the party and it was fun for everyone to look through the photos and try to work out who was who. I especially love the old photos of my mother - she was very cute!

I'm back in NZ now and trying to get into the groove of work and daily life. I have lots of projects on the go - more about that later.

Progress on grandma's memory quilt

I've made some progress on the quilt for my grandmother. I manage to overcome my differences with my mom's Pfaff and machine applique the tree, leaves, and some flowers onto the background.

I'm all set to sandwich the quilt tonight. But, I have no idea how to quilt it. I am hesitant to try and FMQ with a strange machine, although I think a filler design on all of the white between the photos would highlight them. I am wondering if I want to quilt over the photos and make them more 'backgroundy' - some of them are very prominent.

It's Thursday night and the birthday party is on Saturday. Whatever I decide, it better be soon.

Memory quilt for Grandma

Has it really been almost a month since I posted? I have been very busy and productive, but somehow I have neglected to share.

Right now I'm in the USA visiting family. My grandmother turns 100 this week and my mother and I are working on a family tree/memory quilt for her. I admit that we should have planned ahead and I could have done some of the work while I was still at home, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.

I had a major argument with my mom's Mac and scanner, abandoned them and connected the scanner to my Windows laptop. That went fine until I tried to print. Somehow it did not work on my laptop and I needed to move the printer back to the Mac. Finally, I got all of the photos done and added white on white coping strips to make them all 4x4 or 4x8 or 8x8 so that we could easily sew them together into 8" blocks.

We are now embroidering names onto green fabrics. These will be appliqued onto the quilt as leaves on a tree. We decided just to include my grandparents and all of their direct decendents. Luckily our family is small and this only required 22 names.

I am not great at embroidery and those that know me will know that handwork is not my favourite. But, I've managed to do my half and the names are readable, if not slightly rustic.

We have until Saturday to get the whole thing done. I better hustle!