Quilting...A New Adventure!

I grew up being schooled in the ways of home-making by my Grandma Graham. One of the skills I worked on with her was Quilting. I would spend hours and hours working with her on one quilting project after another. But my grandmother's idea of quilting was finding a piece of fabric that could easily be followed to tie or quilt. The quilts were clean, fresh and beautiful but very uncomplicated. She knew how to piece-quilt but, as a mother of 8 home alone 5-out of-7 days in a week, simpler was better. Quilts were always made for birthdays, graduations, weddings and births of little ones.

Nearly eleven years ago my Grandma Graham was working on the quilt for my cousin Kenny's wedding when she had a stroke. The stroke has left her with limited use of one-side of her body and she has had to give up many of her former activities. I know that she misses the opportunities she use to be able to take to serve others. So throughout the years I have tried, at every opportunity possible, to do what she might do and (in this case) make a Quilt.

Last year my cousin Rachael had her first baby and at her shower I had everyone help to tie a quilt. This year my older brother, Joshua, and his wife, Adele, are having their first baby, a boy! Once again I have decided that a quilt IS needed for the baby shower. But because I am soooo excited to be an aunt for the very first time I decided that I would learn how to do something new and piece-quilt. Well, I started with the idea of piece-quilting and instead learned how to strip-quilt and modified the "log cabin" design to come up with this:


It was loads of fun. Excepting the children climbing all over me while I was thus consumed. All is not yet finished, of course, I am the one making this after all. I plan on using a machine washable pen to draw in designs for people to quilt while at the baby shower next month. And then I am still planning on putting a fun pointy edge on it after it is quilted. This project has been fun and didn't take too long (Monday of last week to Tuesday of this week) and I can't wait for the fun to begin at the Baby Shower! ;)