My Quilting Journey - Part 3 - Kerry's Friends Quilt

While I was working on Dresden Wedding (below), my bestie Kerry commented many times how much she liked the colours of the fabrics I was using.  As I had to have so many fabrics I had plenty of bits and pieces left over and found this fairly simple pattern in one of my Australian Patchwork & Quilting Magazines (Dec 2007).  It has large embroidered blocks with 'friends' related sayings which I thought was just perfect for a best friend. Some of them were repeated so I changed the wording on some and made sure to include some teddy bears on one because Kerry is a mad teddy bear collector! Not having done any embroidery before I had a go and found I quite enjoyed it and had all the blocks done in almost no time. I then decided that I would make the whole thing by hand as I could do it in front of the TV at nights and it seemed to come together very quickly. I don't have a sewing room and I find it difficult to get my machine out to do machine sewing so the hand sewing was easier for me at the time. Then I decided I would hand quilt it as well and did a very short workshop at the Quilt Fair on hand quilting and bought a thimble and got stuck into it.  I had a few hiccups along the way but the quilting only took me 5 months and Kerry never knew I was making it (despite the odd close call!) until I gave it to her on her birthday in 2009 (which happened to be 09/09/09!).  She promptly burst into tears, which if you know Kerry told me she loved it!  I decided then that I would definitely do more hand sewing and I have a project in mind for myself which I am going to handsew and quilt.  Anyway that's the story of Kerry's Friends Quilt!

And here is a photo of my besty Kerry and myself at her wedding!