Grandmother of Five!

Those precious girls are finally here! Annabel June and Harper Naomi were born June 19, 2009. The above video is Eli and his sisters' first photo session. Before Amy & Chuck got married, I wanted to make something for them. I don't sew well, I always think I sew better than I do and then am disappointed with the results. I am sure it is because it is a skill that I don't practice enough. I love to cross stitch and saw a movie where the women were discussing that in the 1800's someone would make a appliqued quilt for the bride that would “tell her story”. So I decided to tell Amy & Chuck's story with cross stitch. I created a large center square with their names and when they would be married. The left side is Amy's, the right is Chuck's, there are smaller squares with the name of the hospitals and dates they were born, schools, street addresses where they lived, churches, friend's names, hobbies, etc. I wanted it to be a snapshot of their life up to that point. After it was done, two of my aunts quilted it for me. When Trip was born, I made a baby quilt for him. My aunts were no longer quilting, so I had it machine quilted. Since then I have made a similar wedding quilt for Nikki & Josh and baby quilts for Quinn & Eli. When I found out that the twins were both girls, I got started on their quilts. I wondered at times if I wasn't a little over ambitious but I was already committed by that time. It took me 4 months (almost to the day). I worked most weeks, 7 days, 6 hours a day. I have no idea how many stitches were crossed, but I do know that the hedgehog alone in Harper's quilt had more than 6000 stitches. When I took it in to have the machine quilting done, the owner was showing the quilts to some customers. This man looked at me said, “you should make these and sell them”. The owner laughed and said, “this is a labor of love, no one would pay what these are worth”. Below are my labors of love.

You can click on them to enlarge.