Bitten by the Quilting Bug

After I got my Christmas Table runner completed, I decided I should make some more for Christmas gifts, so I made one for my Mom and one for my Mother-in-law, they were both happy with their new runners. My Dad was even happy that I had taken up quilting, one day he told me that I was the only quilter in the Boylan family since his Grama, which if I remember correctly would be my Grampa's Mother... right now I can't think of her first name, but I'm sure it will come to me.
My Mom and Dad have a couple of quilts that my Great Grama made, one of them was a wedding gift to my Grampa and Grama when they got married, of course it's all hand made, it's a "Crazy Quilt" and has my Grama's name stitched into it. I thought I had a picture of the other quilt that Great Grama made, but I guess I don't, so next time I go to visit my parents, I will have to take a picture of it too. And I will ask my Dad to tell me more about his Grama and Grampa, I know he will be really happy to do that, he loves to reminisce about his younger days.

This is one of the quilts that my Great Grama made when my Grampa and Grama were married in the mid 1900's



About that time my Mom told me she had a quilt that her Grama had made for her, but for some reason, she never got around to quilting it, so Mom wondered if I could quilt it. So she found it in her closet and showed it to me, so I said yea, I could probably quilt it, so I brought it home with me. One day I decided I should get this quilt out and see what I could do about quilting it, and after looking at it, I didn't know if I could quilt it or not. To begin with it was the "Bow Tie" pattern and the blocks were hand pieced, and then machine sewn together, and they were very roughly done, when I showed my mother-in-law she said that it really should be hand quilted, and she offered to teach me how to hand quilt and help me hand quilt the quilt. Well let me tell you, that really scared me, I guess I figured for one thing that if I hand quilted I would never get it done, I'm not a fan of any hand sewing and I'm not that good at it neither, and I didn't think I could sit at a quilt frame for hours and hours hand quilting a quilt. Anyway, to make a long story short, that Bow Tie quilt is still not quilted, and I know that I should really get at it and quilt it. I think now that I will probably just machine quilt it and get it done, so my Mom can at least enjoy it.

After Christmas there were some quilting classes being offered at the local quilt shop, so of course I signed up for some of them. The first one was a table runner, called Entwined Squares, and I made mine with some spring fabrics that just happened to have my favorite colour in it. This is the runner I made in March 2003