Shirley's Quilt

Several months ago Shirley asked me if I would make her a quilt. Because she is such a dear friend there was absolutely no way I would tell her no.

I asked her what size and color she wanted. She said what ever I decided would be fine with her. After working on the pastel colors for the great grand babies I knew I wanted to do something bright and colorful. After looking at my fabric stash red, white, and blue seemed the likely selection.

Since I was enjoying making the court house steps (a.k.a Chinese Lantern)I decided to go ahead and make it that way.


Statistical info:


The finished size is 95 inches long and 83 1/2 inches wide. There are 41 pieces to each of the 42 blocks. The outer pieced border contains 334 cut pieces. So - with doing all the adding the total cut pieces is 2,056. I hand quilted it - using the "in the ditch" procedure. Each quilting line is one inch apart. Just guessing - I have 125 to 150 hours in the hand quilting part. You will have to use your imagination to picture this quilt in it's full size. I don't have a way of spreading it out and still take a picture that would show all the quilt. In the summer time I put it in the yard but since it is winter time I am out of luck.
On the white border I used the back side because the front side contained flowers that had a slight yellow cast to them. You would never know it was the back side though.
This shows the hand stitching. Not each and every stitch is small and perfect. For the most part though, they are uniform in length and spacing. The most important part is that love is sewn in every stitch.
As with each quilt I give away I ask the following:

"Use the quilt, but just don't abuse it!"