Tag Archives: Quilting

The Story Behind Hannah’s Quilt

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As mentioned in an earlier post, every quilt has a story.  This is the story behind the purple nine-patch quilt for our granddaughter, Hannah.

We were both thrilled when we became grandparents for the first time.  Our little Hannah (whose nickname started out Hannah-Bee and then transformed into Honey-Bee) was just such a precious little girl!

Our son-in-law is active duty military and he and our daughter had been moving all over the country.  Time was flying by so quickly, in the blink of an eye Honey-Bee was growing up so fast!  My wife, Elaine, wanted to carry on the family tradition of making a quilt for our granddaughter before time got away from us.  Honey-Bee said she wanted a purple quilt, so purple it is!

Elaine decided on an old and familiar pattern that was one of her grandmother’s favorites, the nine patch block.  She worked on that quilt almost non-stop.  Once she got started, it was difficult to tell when she might stop.  Now that I’ve been quilting, I understand the obsession and can appreciate the investment of time it takes to get a quilt finished.

Elaine was relieved she was able to finish it and get it to Honey-Bee and enjoy a nice visit with the children and grand.  During our wonderful visit, our daughter had an announcement to make…yep, they were expecting another baby on the way!  Alright, it was time to design another quilt.

The Story Behind the Quilt

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Every quilt has a story.  Even though making a quilt can be broken down technically of sewing (or piecing) a fabric top and then quilting the batting, backing and top together then binding it to make the finished quilt, it’s really much more than that to a quilter.  It’s finding the perfect fabric, harmonious colors that work in concert with the pattern you choose. 

Choosing the pattern is another whole task in and of itself.  A lot of thought goes into who the quilt is for.  To give a little perspective on the thought process, have you ever been shopping and looked at an article of clothing and said “this looks like my sister” (or mom, etc.)?  So coming up with just the right pattern makes the project more personal.

The story behind the quilt I’ll be posting about today is the one we use as our header image on our website which was made for my mother, Lorie, whose favorite color is purple.  She lives in Chicago and it gets really cold there in the winter.  I knew the quilt would come in handy, but I wanted it to be special.

We set about looking for a pattern that would work well with purple (tougher than I thought it would be!).  When we came across the YouTube tutorial for Country Chic, we both immediately thought that’s the one!  (Here’s the link for the tutorial I followed https://youtu.be/kWrmh2pxkf8 .  This lady is pretty awesome!)

Because the circular pattern is created with the placement of darks and lights, being able to lay out all of the pieces before sewing it together is a must to make sure the pattern develops correctly.  (I’ll post a picture of how we began laying it out so you can see what I’m talking about).  I think this pattern would be a good “scrap buster” too.  That just may be another project down the line.

Mom loved her quilt.  She’s mentioned that she’s gone into her bedroom a few times just to take a look at it.  That just warms our hearts.