A Quilted Retirement Gift

I have a wonderful sister-in-law named Mary Sue. Many of you have heard me talk about her before because she’s THE ONE who talked me into taking a quilting class in 1987 and then never finished her first quilt. I couldn’t have chosen a better wife for my brother ~ or sister for me 😁. And I can’t thank her enough for getting me into quilting.

Well, after a successful career in physical therapy she has retired, and this past week we celebrated her big event. The problem was, what to gift her for this special occasion? I finally decided something homemade was the answer, and I chose a Christmas table runner top I’d stitched together a few years ago and have always loved.

As usual, I came up with this great idea the day before the party. So I quickly layered the quilt sandwich and had fun quilting the lovely “stack and whack” stars. I haven’t done a faux piped binding recently so I had to look up the tutorial on my own blog (click here to read it for yourself). The trick is to cut the binding fabric strips at 1 3/8″ and the piping strips at 1 5/8″. This always seemed a bit odd to me, but it makes sense because the majority of the piping strip ends up inside the binding. The photos on my previous post were a bit dark, so here are some new ones:

The two strips are sewn together with the seam pressed towards the binding strip (green on my piece)

Then the strip is pressed in half, wrong sides together, so only a narrow strip of the piping shows.

The binding is sewn onto the back of the quilt with the binding strip against the quilt, piping side up, and using a 1/4″ seam allowance. It is then folded to the front of the quilt and stitched in the ditch, using a color thread to match the piping.

It’s really quite simple and the results are great! I think she liked it 😊!

Congratulations Mary Sue!

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Just a reminder!

I hope you’re planning to attend the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison this week. I’ll be presenting my newest lecture ~ Silhouettes and Shadows ~ each afternoon.

I just noticed that the photo for my morning class was cropped on their website in such a way that it makes no sense. So, here it is with the class description:

Fall Into Repliqué: Learn an entire toolbox worth of techniques for recreating photographs as finished quilt blocks, while making a lovely autumn wall hanging. Three variations of Chris’ technique from her latest book will be covered, plus two block finishing techniques. Class concludes with a simple way to connect small quilts modularly. 

I’d love to have you join me, so if you haven’t signed up yet please click here! Advance registration ends Tuesday!