Quilt for a Friend

Jamie is 33 years old and undergoing breast cancer treatment. My friend, Ann (Victoria Rose Quilts) and I were talking and she said she would like to make a quilt for Jamie. I told Ann that if she pieced it, I would quilt it and then it could be from both of us. She pieced it and gave it to me. I looked at the quilt for a few days and then jumped in, still uncertain how I would quilt all the elements. I knew that an edge to edge design would not do it justice, especially with the needle turned applique center. I quilted it on the long arm since my sewing machine was in for service.

I began by stitching in the ditch and then I quilted the parallel lines in the large triangles in the broken pinwheel blocks. Next I decided to freehand leaves and flowers in the flower print triangles and squares. I wanted something different in the adjoining triangles so I free handed a leafy feather.

I stitched a meandering leaf fill in the large corner triangle realizing that it wouldn't show with the busy print.  However, it does show on the plainer back.

That left me with the white small triangles and the applique middle square. Generally we try to quilt the same density on the whole quilt but I decided to do a smaller fill pattern and I like how it looks, especially how it pops the applique.

Finally, I quilted an alternating leaf around the border. Quilting really does make the quilt! I will now return the quilt to Ann for binding and then we will deliver it to Jamie to show our love and support.