Beauty in the Making, The Great American Quilt IV

Sue Stanek needs a gold medal for all the work she has done on the quilt.  (She has completed 9 blocks.)  She’s simply amazing in her precise techniques.  Every point lines up perfectly.  To the untrained eye you would not even recognize the work that goes into the sewing.   It’s all about the points my friends.

The photos show the beginning “layout” of the blocks.  In a photo you can see the melding of the blocks better than in person.  In person you see it in 3D, where as a photo blends lines so it looks like the blocks have been sewn together.

Unlike in the past, quilters had to use their instincts.  We had so many years of experience in the room to help make boarder color decisions and I believe it may have been the first time photos were taken to help make color decisions.  A photo makes auditioning borders much easier to do.  We went through many variations of what do.

The outside border is gorgeous.  We love how that looks but we also felt there needed to be an inner boarder to give it a rich depth.  You can see by our auditioning what each border adds to the quilt.   We auditioned a 2 1/2 inch background boarder.  It extends the background but doesn't do anything "extra" for the quilt character.  We then rolled the gorgeous boarder over to add more red to see if that would work.

I kept taking pictures so we could go back and forth to see what the differences were.

We tried a 2 1/2 inch red border with a very slight print.  Boy, doesn't that make a difference?  Then we tried a very rich looking fabric, which gives the quilt a different look but would that really work for the person whom would like to own this quilt? 

These borders really make an individual statement in the character of the quilt.  I know that sounds like gobbledygook but you can visually see the difference.  So what's it going to look like when you go around the corner?

Each definitely has a charm.  What would you choose?  We have 60 plus blocks to finish.  This coming Thursday all the blocks are to be returned.

A lot of work goes into the beauty you see here.  We hope you'll help us by purchasing a raffle ticket down the road.  Our hope is that the quilt will be completed by June or a little before.  The proceeds go to the guild for projects and the operations of the guild.  Our charity work that we do is making baby blankets for the NICU unit at Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin.  Our members visited the unit and were overwhelmed by seeing their blankets being used for the babies.  This past year we donated 30 something blankets.  You can believe that each blanket has about 15 plus or minus hours in the making of the baby blanket.  What a wonderful gift for such precious babies.

Oh P.S. members were also working on other things such as the non-red and white photos.  One is a runner and the other is hand work for a quilt.  All by hand.