My big mouth

I spent yesterday with my patchwork group.  We only all seem to get together once a month and most of the time we end up doing more chatting than sewing.  Some people make sweets and some people bring extra rice balls for lunch, Mrs. Furui serves tea.  Her poor husband is relegated all day to his upstairs office.

Before we got down to the purpose of the gathering, working on a quilt for the hospital's Children's ward, Mrs. Furui asked for advice about quilting on a baby quilt her sister is making.  Such a BEAUTIFUL quilt this is going to be!

I gather that some comment I made years ago put a bee in Mrs. Furui's sister's bonnet...  I have basically forgotten but the comment seems to have stuck.  It seems (and I do recall this) that Mrs. Furui's sister asked Mrs. Furui to make a baby quilt for one of the sister's friends.  And Mrs. Furui made an absolutely gorgeous quilt!  My comment seems to have been that I sure hope the sister appreciated Mrs. Furui for the gorgeous work as I would not be putting in all the hours and detail for a SISTER'S FRIEND'S baby quilt.  And I guess I specifically said that Mrs. Furui's sister better do something very nice for Mrs. Furui.  And this comment got back to the sister...  And she seems to have taken it that I expected her to make her own quilt...  All this in friendly humor of course.  (I hope.)

So Mrs. Furui's sister took this comment to heart and when her own daughter was expecting she vowed that she wasn't going to let Tanya make any comments again and that she'd make her OWN quilt and not expect Mrs. Furui to do it.

And she surely went at it with preciseness and vigor!  Look at all the work that is in this quilt flimsy.  Of course everything hand embroidered, hand pieced (yes, all those triangles too) and hand appliqued.  And of course this is going to be all hand quilted.

Mrs. Furui was being called in to suggest and trace quilting lines on the flimsy, get the quilt sandwiched and then return the quilt to the new grandmother (her sister) for the hand quilting.  And that's where the patchwork group's advice was requested...

Around the baby's name a wreath of flowers will be quilted.  As for the rest...  A grid pattern?  A rope circle pattern?  And the border...  More rope pattern?

"Uh-hum...  If it were ME, I'd put a double twisting "ribbon" around all those blocks (meaning a lot more quilting in the white areas) and leave the rope patterns out...  that seems rather boyish to me.  And then maybe some scallop quilting in the border with a sprinkling of the same flowers from the center wreath?  That would tie it all together and look very feminine..."

Notice how opinionated I get with other people's quilts...  Mrs. Furui's sister is probably going to hate me for speaking up...  I did add,

"It's just a suggestion..."

On to the purpose of the day!

The Liberty circles were ready to be sewn together and though we hadn't planned to add a border it seemed like the flimsy needed one.  We all got very creative (with Mrs. Furui's fabric stash) and decided to add a graduated border.  The fabric graduated in blue tones from almost black to light blue.  It was actually very simple to do and makes for an interesting border that doesn't take away from the circles.

We will consider quilting options next month.  (Machine quilting is high on the suggestion list...  that leaves it to me but with my already big mouth I didn't feel as if I could decline the honor....  Rats.)