Marathon Quilting

I am done with customer quilts until January. I did 11 quilts in a little over 2 weeks by working many days 8 - 10 hours. It was intense (so that's why there's been no recent posts). But with the wedding now just a little over 4 weeks away, I needed to finish up customer quilts and get on to wedding related things. My list is long. There is still a few details to finish on the wedding dress and the flower girl's dress. I still have to figure out my own outfit for the wedding and then all the other details such as reception table decorations etc. But all fun stuff and what a beautiful time of year to get married. It will feel good to have a break from customer quilts, especially after this marathon I just completed! :) I'll post pictures of many of the quilts soon.

Recent Customer Quilts

Here's a few photos of some recent customer quilts.

Dress Almost Done!

The wedding dress is almost done! What a relief to finally have it put together. The only thing left for me is the zipper (which will be quite difficult). My daughters are going to make the flowers that go on the dress. We made a sample yesterday and it turned out wonderfully. This morning when I started working on the dress (at about 6 am). I realized that the lace layer was too full. So I took it all apart, remade the lace layer by taking about 6 inches out of it and then resewed it back together. It was frustrating to do, but now I'm glad I did. We didn't want that full of a look around the waist. The organza layer had to be hemmed by hand. The edge was rolled narrowly and then small stitches held it in place. I'm so glad to get to this point.

Wedding Dress

I spent several hours frustrated with the wedding dress yesterday and today. The lace edged fabric was not wide enough to go from the waistline seam to the edge of the train. I thought and thought about it and finally figured out that the only thing to do was to piece it. So I put a seam across the train right about at floor level. It seemed like the best place where it would be the least noticeable. Then sewing on the lace was such a hassle. It puckered all up and down the seam. I ended up serging the seams and that totally straightened them out. We bought a beaded trim yesterday to go along the top edge. I'm done for today.

A Couple Customer Quilts

Here's photos of a couple October customer quilts. They were both pretty large so required quite a few hours to do. Both have lots of feathers.

Wedding Dress

The beading is getting done on the wedding dress. Very slow process. I am not knotting each bead in the back but each cluster of beads. First we started with just the center beads which are a small diamond shaped plastic bead. After doing a couple of these, it was easy to see that there was not enough sparkle in just these kinds of beads alone. So I bought some glass seed beads. They have a silver metal look on the inside of each bead. It's just the right touch. It looks like a snowflake -- just what Charissa wanted. I'm just adding until it seems like enough. My goal is to finish the beading this week and the rest of the dress next week!

Father-in-law

Today is the service for my father-in-law, Louis Glen Jarmer. He passed away on October 12 after two long weeks of struggle and pain resulting from a difficult surgery. He was a good man, a faithful husband and caring father. Probably one of my fondest memories is when we arrived home from Russia with our two Russian children, exhausted and so thankful to be back on U.S. soil, there he was at the gate (and Rick's mom too) to greet his two new grandchildren. That spoke a lot to me about his character. The other great memory is how he was always interested in what I was cooking, canning or really anything going on in the kitchen. I liked that about him. He will be missed in our family's lives.

Back From Quilt Retreat

I'm back from quilt retreat. It was a very good time. We enjoyed the Spokane area quilt show, shopped for some fun new home decorative items, sewed, watched girlie movies and talked a lot. It's always such a good break from everything else that is routine. This year I sewed a lap quilt for my daughter and her soon to be husband. They both love movies and this fabric was given to me about a year ago by a quilt customer. It was very simple to put together except for that diagonal seam that runs through the center square. But after some work and using tape to get the two pieces lined up and then stuck together the picture in the center came out nearly perfect. I hope to quilt it soon and give it to them at one of their showers. I also made an apron, worked on my dresden plate quilt, and a small fall wall hanging. It was good to get some of my own work done!

Off to Quilt Retreat

I am off to quilt retreat today. It almost got canceled for me. Yesterday my father-in-law passed away, so leaving on a quilt retreat didn't seem like the best idea. But my mother-in-law and husband both thought I should still go. His service won't be for a week and a half probably. In the last year and a half, there has been so much death in my life. The most difficult for me was my granddaughter last summer, but there's also been two cats, our dog and now my father-in-law. Death brings about a sobering look at life and eternity. I believe there is more than this life. I believe what the Bible teaches about a heaven or a hell that await all mankind beyond this life. Most importantly I believe that the hope of eternity lies in having a faith-based belief in Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation, the only way to heaven. So for me, even though death is difficult and sad, there is always this hope -- this certainty that this life is not all there is. That is my greatest comfort. I look forward with great anticipation to a great reunion in heaven. That will be better than a quilt retreat! (But I am looking forward to a fun retreat)
This photo is from our 2003 quilt retreat. It will be the same 3 friends on this retreat (one is my sister).

Wedding Dress

I haven't worked on the wedding dress as much as I wanted to last week. The day I hand basted the skirt pieces to the underlining, it took so long that I was burned out on sewing the dress and didn't sew at all for the next two days. Then I ran out of the one lace fabric that goes under the organza layer so I won't be able to put the whole skirt together and sew it to the bodice until I can purchase that fabric. It was very expensive fabric too, so we're waiting for a coupon to make that purchase. The good thing is that I feel now like I'm on home stretch. Everything is cut out, the bodice is sewn, and the base fabric of the skirt is together. Today or tomorrow the beads/sequence should arrive and then those will all have to be hand stitched on -- a job I'm delegating to the bride!
For this photo, I pinned the two layers on top of the base skirt fabric. The top organza layer will be brought up at different points around the skirt and feathered flowers will be in those spots. That will allow that beautiful lace around the bottom to show, and it will wrap around the edge of the train too.