My Quote Quilt ~ Finished

Well it still needs binding…..But I don’t ever do my own binding so as far as I am concerned it’s finished. HAHA!

Yes…my Quote quilt is finished. Here was the start of my journey, here.

I did get side tracked as easily happens with me….but in the end it was actually completed in the same time line be1se I knew it would take about 18 months on my original time line. I am very pleased with my quilt. It’s so personal and as I was making it so many things happened during that time….and the quotes that I was working on seemed to always have more meaning while they were being stitched because the circumstances in my life seemed to apply to many of them at the time. During this 18 months I lost 107 pounds, I had a few kids graduate high school, I helped take care of my ill grandmother. In all reality most of these embroideries were stitched near her hospital bed or at her house while I was staying the night to be with her. Many nurses came in to see what I was working on….I think nobody really “understood” what a quilt of quotes was and I think most people didn’t get it while I was working on it. Nobody could see the vision.

I love quotes and I have been collecting them for years….but I did ask for “help” from my friends and social media to get quotes on some occasions….not because I didn’t think I could find some…but I was usually in a hurry to get some that spoke to me in a certain time frame. I was usually printing a bunch up so I could trace them and have them ready to go with me for travel. It was an easy travel project because they were small and didn’t take specific colors of threads ect.

I got quotes from friends, relatives, facebook memes, song lyrics, the bible, books, movies. anything that spoke to me. Several of them are things I say on an almost daily basis or very regularly. Some things are just things I believe in my soul….some things are just inspirational ect. They all have a personal meaning to me.

See in the quote that says “In times of Test, Family is best” I quilted our family Initials. We are the Hortons & Dickinsons

In the blocks with the Chorus of “how great thou art” I quilted the word “Haiti” because anytime I hear this song it reminds me of my special time in Haiti and how God saved my life.

You can see different designs that match the quotes in these blocks as well.

In the “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud” I quilts rainbows & clouds.   ( up above)

I wanted to include a spider web somewhere. Do you all know that in all crazy quilts a spider web was quilted in them? ( well I should say most) It’s because in Victorian times they thought that spider webs & spiders ( in  embroidery works ) brought good luck. I actually don’t believe in luck. But I love nature ( not spiders particularly) but I think they are beautiful and really a miracle that is created by God for these insects to eat and survive. So I find them beautiful ….I don’t ever want to be caught in one…but they are beautiful none the less.  So I quilted one.

I used only shades of brown, gray, & black threads ( mostly) …..I wanted it to be very neutral and for the focus to be on the quotes.

Speaking of the “vision” …The quilt really didn’t turn out exactly like my vision either. I don’t think it’s good or bad…..I think it just is. It’s so ME. I wanted the focus to be on the quotes and the overall feeling to be soft and shabby chic kind of style. I don’t know…..I took everything in me not to draw different designs and embroider more things into each block. Just because I was going to focus on the quotes. Well once I got all of the quotes together…..and in a quilt top. I decided I would quilt each block differently. The problem with this is that I lost my kind of flowing feeling in the overall  “big picture” of the quilt. But is it so “ME” because this is how I am. I love textures, my attention span can’t seem to focus on an over all “feeling” and there are many pages to my “book” they shouldn’t all be the same…should they? That would be a boring book. So I just embrace the parts of me even if they don’t go according to my vision. After all, this quilt is such a work of heart for me. This quilt is so personal to me and my life and this journey. I am pretty much in love with it.sometimes you just have to go with your heart and not the vision. It always works out better that way. ( hey, is that a quote?..by Charisma Horton?)

I could actually go through each block and tell you why I quilted it the way I did …..but that is another 96 pictures of quotes that you have already seen once. :)

I have been showing parts of the process of finishing this quilt on social media the last few weeks. After I quilted it I went in and added a few 100 buttons. yes….I am tired of buttons for now. LOL But I have to admit that much of my button placement was dictated by my quilting designs. I knew as I was quilting it where I would put buttons….so I purposely made “spaces” for them in blocks ect.

I thought that would be a great plan to make it all come together. Honestly I could probably add more bits of lace and buttons…and I thought about it. But I think I had to make myself stop because I would lose the quotes with much more embellishments.

The other thing that I love about this quilt is that I originally cut a few pieces of background fabrics for my stitcheries  from my stash…but like most of us I tend to buy a lot of the same colors and styles. So along the way I collected different backgrounds in unexpected ways to add to my quilt. There is cotton, linen, vintage canvas ( I washed & dried it a few times before cutting) and some other things. I picked them up at yard sales, quilt shows and my grandma gave me stuff from her craft room.  They all just came to me and they are all so perfect. So I really only spent about 25$ on this quilt ..and 20$ of it was on the lace in the border. The buttons I got from a guild sale a few weeks ago for 50 cents. I bought the lace because I didn’t have that much lace and I wanted long pieces..so I went to Joann’s and used a 40% off coupon and bought a 12 yard roll.

So due to all the postings along the way ….several people have asked for a copy of the quotes. There are 96 of them. I am going to copy them and ship them at cost to the people who want them. But I also think I am going to post a tutorial for the quilt with a PDF ( thanks to a friend who is helping me with that!) on my blog in the next few weeks. So if you want to wait for that that is perfectly fine. Or you can contact me and I will ship them to you for the cost of copies and shipping. I will type up some simple instructions for what I did for the quilt to include with the copies. I am not a professional pattern writer….but I will be here for questions. :)

There are about 4-5 of them that you will want to change for sure because they are very personal. 1 block has my kids names, 1 block has my husband’s name, 2 blocks have my name and monogram. …there might be one other one that I can’t think of off the top of my head. But I am including them in the stack because they will be place holders for you to include what you want in there. They will be ideas for you to personalize. I will show you in the tutorial how I put the quilt together.

I didn’t want the rows of quotes to line up perfectly because I wanted the quotes to be floating & staggered a bit so they could stand alone.  I also didn’t center each quote in my blocks when I embroidered them for that reason. I wanted them to be wonky…and scattered. So in order to keep that look I put in random strips of my neutral border fabric. I didn’t want to put in to many because the quilt was already so big…so I didn’t want it to get that much bigger.

Here’s the back:

So here she is…..my work of Heart. Thanks for all your love, support & help with this project along the way! You are all the best!

Many blessings on your journey!

and a quote to leave with you

“let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love”

Mother Teresa.

I wish this was included in my quilt. :(  ( maybe the next one)

P.S. I am actually going to start another one…that will look much different. I want to make one ( and I am giving myself plenty of time to complete) for Clarissa. It will be her graduation quilt and she is starting the 8th grade ( see giving myself plenty of time) I want to collect quotes about mothers & daughters…wisdom I want her to know along the way and I might even include funny things that she says. I am thinking of bright rainbow colors and I am kind of letting the idea marinate a bit of what I want…..the thing about her is that she loves everything personalized. She would much rather I make her a cake than buy her one…she loves thoughtful and meaningful things…I have no idea where she gets that from? ( totally me not her father at all) So this will be another work of heart for her. So I will post pictures of that one along the way as well.