Thursday, May 2, 2013

A Friends quilt...

A local gal called me one day and asked if I would be interested in making her a quilt to hang above her stairway.  We visited a bit about what she wanted and I told her I would love too.  Soooo after a visit to her home, and several questions later we had a design chosen.   I had pinned several quilts to my 'inspiration board' in Pinterest and after showing her several designs she narrowed it down to one.  I'm going to love putting this together.  (more on this design later)

And then she showed me some dish towels she had embroidered when she was a child.  Her grandmother taught her to embroidery and as she talked and told me about their time together she started pulling out each towel.
Let me just state here that she "loved" these towels almost to death.  One in particular!!  haha  
Over the years some of the towels have disappeared and these are all that she has left so she asked if I would make a wall hanging out of them so she could keep them forever.
So this is the first piece I've put together.   There will be a second piece with different embroidery pieces that she made.  Both will be hung in her laundry room  so she can enjoy them.  
The fabrics I chose to use was 30's prints that I bought from Quilters Delight in Holdrege.  
All towels had to be backed with fusible interfacing.
They were all so thin from so much use over the years.

A few had to be pieced because there were a lot
of wear holes in the cloth.  

The kitten face was a pot holder.  I attached it to a
piece of leftover towel from one of the other pieces.

Size:  34" x 20"
This has now been sewn together and I'm starting on the second set of embroidery pieces.   I'll show them later.  This second piece will be take a bit more time to sew together but the fabrics will be the same.  

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

12 comments:

  1. This will be so precious for her. I have some old dishtowels that my mother made that were also used almost to death. Shortly after I first started quilting I decided to rescue them and cut the portions with the designs into squares and set them aside to do something similar to this. I've just never gotten around to doing it. Will love seeing your finished quilt. Maybe some day I'll get around to mine.

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    1. Thanks Mary. I'm sure it will be and I'm glad I have the opportunity to make it for her.

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  2. How sweet! This quilt reminds me of the doll quilt I made for our daughter when she was about eight years old using blocks that she had embroidered. It's a wonderful way to preserve embroidered pieces - especially ones that have been "loved to death" - ;))

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    1. Yes it is. And the more I listened to her talk about stitching with her grandma the more I loved the idea of being asked to help preserve these. I'm honored.

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  3. Hey what's with making me wait to see what you two decided on???? I hate waiting LOL. Love what you did with her dish towels.

    Crispy

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    1. hahaha Sorry. Maybe next week I can get around to it. We still have to decide (and buy) the fabric yet. So I'm going to try to get this second embroidery top finished real soon and then ..... it will be worth the wait! hahahah
      Thanks Chris.

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  4. Oh, that got me to thinking. I have some embroidered pictures that my Grandmother made for my mother. I'll bet they would be perfect for a wall hanging. thanks for the idea.

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  5. I love it - what a wonderful way to hold onto those cherished memories!

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    1. Thanks Ellen. I'm so glad she came up with this idea and that she wanted me to help her.

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  6. Oh I see I should have also read this post or read this one first as it explains where the embroidered bits came from! How sweet of you to do this for your friend! Lovely quilt but then I am a 30's fabric fiend too.

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Thanks for stopping by and
I hope you're having a great day....Linda

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