49 Memories, Plus One

I can't believe I haven't written the final post about Ed's t-shirt quilt! I shared photos of it on all my socials, but apparently a detailed blog post slipped my mind (as most things do these days).

This beast of a quilt was finished just before our quilt group hosted a show & tell/mini quilt show in the church lobby on a Sunday morning. It was September 22- I remember that distinctly because I was sore and stiff from my 15 miles at Ragnar Trail Wisconsin the previous two days... which seems fitting, as this project was a huge monument to Ed's running career.


Last you heard from me, the quilt top was finished and ready to be quilted. That was in May (!). I finally made the time to get into the studio at the NWTC Artisan Center to get this thing quilted on August 22. It went shockingly well in comparison to my last long-arm adventure!



I decided to try binding this by machine, as I didn't think I could hand-stitch nearly 50 feet of binding in two weeks. Honestly, doing it on the machine wasn't that easy either! I don't necessarily love how it turned out (it just feels sloppy to see the stitching on the front), but I got it done!


Ed's quilt kind of became the show piece of our mini quilt show at church. I had informed his wife Martha that we'd have it on display and he could take it home with him, but I'm not sure she told him that. The look on his face when he walked out of sanctuary after service and realized it was HIS quilt was absolutely priceless. It filled my bucket for sure.

Martha explains to Ed that this is HIS quilt...


Apparently I wore the same shirt as the day I quilted it. Weird.

The quilting group had a lot of lovely pieces on display as well. I felt bad that I kind of overshadowed everyone else's beautiful work with my giant installation, but hopefully there are no hard feelings!




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