Completing A Friend’s Quilt

Last week a friend of mine from Church, Carol, called and asked me if I could help her with a quilt project. She had bought a bunch of material while on a trip to Africa years ago with her husband. She hand stitched the material into Dresden Plate quilt blocks. That little project took years. That is where the potential quilt stopped. I think she told me it was over three years ago.

Now she wanted to finish the quilt, but had run out of steam. She emailed me photos of her squares and since they were so gorgeous I knew they just had to be finished into a quilt, otherwise all that hard work and good memories of her trip would be lost.

I went over to her house to collect her work. The blocks were even more beautiful in person. Carol told me she wanted them to make a queen sized quilt. I counted her blocks and told her she was short at least another whole row. There was no way she could handle making more blocks.

Carol suggested a border out of the fabric she had used for the the Dresden Plates, as she still had plenty. As a I looked at it I told her I thought a border of that type would take away from her completed squares and suggested sashing the squares (that is framing each square) with a unifying fabric that did not compete with the African fabrics. She loved my idea and left all the decisions in my hands.

I found a material I thought complimented her squares and bought enough to make the sashing and the backing. As she had sewn the squares together I had to take them apart and add the new fabric. Thankfully I was able to turn her squares into a queen sized quilt and have the proportions look right.

I finished making her quilt top today and will take it to Tina my long arm quilter tomorrow for her to quilt it. I can’t wait to talk to Tina about ideas on how to quilt this beautiful quilt that honors the hard work of hand sewn Dresden Plates.

I hope Carol likes it as much as it do. I am not used to working on other people’s projects, but this one is so special.