Family Quilt Giveaway Christmas 2023

It has been a dream of mine for many years to give each family unit a Christmas quilt. This was the year! I began in November 2022 to make nine unique quilts using only fabrics from my holiday fabric stash - 3 bins. (I STILL have three bins!)

I packed each quilt in a decorative box because I wanted each recipient to have a way to store the quilt. I arrived at my SIL's early on Christmas Eve day to deliver the boxes and heaped them in a pile in the middle of the room. Then, after the usual family gift exchange, I had each family unit pick a number and we all gathered in the "quilt gift" room. Each designated family member was to choose a box and hold onto it till all boxes were chosen. When I gave the signal to open the boxes....

CHAOS!

It was WONDERFUL and everything I hoped it would be. 

There were a few exceptions to the randomness of the numbers. My daughter Laura saw the Santa blocks when they were on the design wall and fell in love with them. She told me she wanted whatever that quilt turned out to be, so I gave it to her and the kids.

Nancy, my SIL, collects Santas and displays about 100 of them at Christmas. Because I had leftover Santa blocks, I decided to make a smaller version of Laura's.

My daughter Kim, who lives in California, chose hers while in CT during the summer. She said she had forgotten all about it by the time Christmas came around, so her quilt wound up being a surprise. 

My sister Jean lives in Florida, so I made a special Florida-style Christmas quilt for her.

And I fudged the number-picking to make sure Pearl, my 5-year-old niece, picked the only quilt that was kid-friendly.

Marianne's Quilt

My work colleague and friend Marianne became an artist with a career after retirement! She makes these adorable multi-media portraits of ladies, which she calls dollies, in everyday activities, like shopping or gardening, and an occasional famous personality like Marilyn Monroe. They are adorable and fun to look at and study. She also has a fisherman in a rowboat that is waiting to be scooped up. She gave me a tour of her workspace, which isn't any cleaner or organized than my quilt studio! Seem we artists and crafters have to deal with the spaces we have and make do.

On her first visit to my house, I gave Marianne the full show-and-tell of all my quilts. She was especially drawn to the quilts with small-pieced blocks, which are my favorites. She suggested I should put them in the community art gallery space in Branford, but I don't know about that. I feel that once I have to start producing, the whole project will become a weight on my shoulders. But I am thinking about it.

I noticed that she hasn't done a quilter lady yet. So, one rainy day at lunch I proposed an "artist" swap: I would make her a quilt if she would make me a quilt lady. I could see her considering this and she finally said yes! Once I found out that her favorite color was ochre (!) I was off and running. 

I discovered this beautiful pale-yellow print with roses and birds, and filled in with 4-inch stars in ranges of yellows and ochres and little bits of red. The original pattern used black for sashing, borders, and background, but I deemed that too harsh and used a dark forest green. My long-arm quilter Liz and I chose to use a wool batting which made the beautiful quilting design pop! Once I added binding and the label to Morning Sanctuary, I could hardly wait to give it to Marianne. 

On reveal day last March, I wrapped the quilt in a piece of fabric that she could possibly use in her work and tied it with the selvedge of the main fabric. I then put that package in a decorative box with a mug pad that I made with her colors. When I arrived at her house, she brought me immediately to the kitchen where my quilt dollie was propped front and center on her stove. I love her! She is holding fabric and a book. There is a cup of coffee on the table, and a bookshelf full of books (we are both readers). 

My Sister's Quilt!

On one of my sister's very rare visits to my home in Connecticut, I brought her into my quilt sanctuary and gave her a quick show-and-tell of what I had completed over the past several years. I guess I inspired her because she actually asked me to make her a quilt! 

Recently Jeannie updated her home colors from turquoise and sand (a common theme for living in Florida) to blue and white to work with her dishware collection.  So we started looking through my pattern collection of blue and white quilts. She loved this one called Wintry Wonder from the 2014 American Patchwork & Quilting Calendar.

As we began picking fabrics from my stash, she fell in love with a gorgeous blue and white floral, a Jacobean-type style, called Brittany by Dover Hill for Benartex. I didn't have enough to back the quilt, so I decided to use as much of it as possible in the quilt top. You can see it in the border blocks, the Cups and Saucers blocks, and sprinkled throughout the top. (I had not seen this block before and thought how perfect for the pattern she picked to coordinate with her dishes!) I chose Williamsburg "Blue Byrd" by Windham Fabrics for the backing, which is the last photo.

I devoted all my time to getting the top finished, piecing the backing, and making the binding to bring with me when I visit her next month. I found a long-arm quilter who will quilt and bind it while I am there so Jeannie will have her quilt right away!