A quilt for Frances

Two summers ago I decided to make a quilt for my husband's secretary for Christmas.  I found some beautiful bright floral prints that I wanted to use.  I started piecing it together and when I was finished with the top I stood back, looked at it and cried tears of sorrow!  It was SO crooked and there was no possible way to repair it!  The design itself was beautiful but the execution was not on-spot.  I was devestated.

A few weeks later we took our family vacation to Illinois and, to make a long story short, I found the perfect fabric for Frances.  My husband is a minister and these are the fabrics I chose.  (The blocks are religious sayings).

These squares were found as a bolt of fabric that I cut out.  I had such a fun time contructing this but it was a bit of a challenge because the squares weren't all the same size, which I didn't realize until we got home from our vacation.  So what I did was I put boarders on the squares so I could trim them all down to the same size.

Now onto the backing. I found this gorgeous print that was the same theme of the blocks: religious sayings, creme color with music notes (Frances sings in the choir too).  It was just perfect.  Again I didn't realize until we got back home that I had not bought enough.  So I had to modify it.  I found some solid green fabric that I could maybe add to the sides.  Again, still not enough.  So I found some dark brown paterned fabric that I could add.  Finally enough fabric!  And then I had this brilliant idea to put it together so the back looked like a cross and I LOVE how it turned out.

So this quilt took a little while longer than expected but I was extremely pleased with the finished product.  When I handed it to Frances for Christmas I said "I'm having a hard time giving this to you!" (She understood why). 

As a side note I free-form quilted the quilt with my trusty Kenmore sewing machine.