Since Gail's birthday is in January she was the first of "The Girls" to receive her quilt.
This fabric, with it’s angels and prayers, inspired me to create a quilt for Gail. Her spirit is evident in everything she does. She has a kind heart and gentle nature backed by a strong faith. I'm counting on her backing when I make that final trip!
With just a half yard of the novelty fabric I wasn’t sure I’d have enough. In my first layout I tried to use a snowball along with a nine patch of green and blue coordinates.
The snowball seemed to cut off too much of what was fun about the novelty print so I abandoned that and went with a full square of the print.
The green and blue of the 9 patch looked too dark so I alternated them with the cream background. The cream sashing also helped to lighted things up. I used a mottled rust and the blue floral for the corner stones in the sashing to tie in with the colors of the borders, piping and binding.
I couldn't resist using these quilts as an opportunity to try something new. For Gail's I use the mottled rust to create a small band of piping between the dark blue and floral borders. I repeated the rust color for the binding which looks beautiful in contrast to the dark blue backing. I didn't realize that I should have based this down before giving it to my long-arm quilter but she was a dear and did it for me.
The long arm quilting for this quilt looks like wings of an angel. How appropriate! For the thread I selected a rust color that can be seen clearly on the back yet blends in nicely on the front.
The final touch was a label with a special caption that I found on the Internet which reads:
"A day hemmed in prayer seldom unravels."
One final note, when Gail read the quote on the label she ran to find a project she had been working on; a counted cross stitch of the very same sentiment! Great minds think alike.
