Family History – Page 7

A Little Quilt Therapy’ll Do Ya

Posted on March 11, 2015 by TK HarrisonMarch 9, 2015

My kids are on spring break. While this is a time for many students and families to run off a play for a week, my kids get to stay home and enjoy some down-time interspersed with doctor’s appointments. It’s the only time we can fit them into their busy schedules unless we want to pull them out of school – and none of them want to be pulled out of school!

Spring break for this mom means no time to quilt. I want to spend time with my kids. It’s supposed to rain (GAH! the mud!) most of the week so they’ll be stuck inside, when they’re not at their doctor’s appointments.

I decided I would carve out 30 minutes each day to sew. Sunday evening was my first night of this spring break experiment.

I am making a 10″ block (finished size) lap quilt. Super simple. I already had the fabric (from AbbiMays.com, of course) and the squares cut out so I sat down at my sewing machine and put together nine squares. Just nine. This little bit of piecing constitutes one-fourth of my quilt top (sans the borders).

test

How fun! If I use those 30 minutes a day wisely, I can complete the quilt top on day five by adding the first border and adding the second border on day six.

HalleQUILTlujah!

President’s Day 2015

Posted on February 16, 2015 by TK HarrisonFebruary 15, 2015

The third Monday of February is President’s Day, a national holiday in the United States. It started as a way to honor our first president George Washington as well as Abraham Lincoln, both who had birthdays in February. However, it has evolved into a day to honor all American presidents. The banks and post offices are closed and the kids are off of school.

As I watched this video, I thought of my grandfather and my grandmother-in-law. Both were born in 1909. My grandpa passed away in 1989 but my husband’s grandmother lived until she was a month shy of her 97th birthday in 1986. I believe I counted that Grandmother had lived through 15 presidents in her time on Earth. That is amazing to me…until my husband piped up and said he had lived through 10 of them!

Another Commissioned T-Shirt Quilt: It’s All Greek to Me!

Posted on February 11, 2015 by TK HarrisonFebruary 9, 2015

I received the t-shirts for a special quilt, to be made for a friend’s daughter and son-in-law, in May, June or July last year. I was happy to make the quilt for them and started on it right away. My youngest daughter and I laid out all of the t-shirts on my bed, then photographed them. The recipient (and her mom) had to then decide what shirts to use in the quilt and what not to use. We went back and forth, paring down the shirts as we went along. This is one of the most painstaking parts of making a t-shirt quilt. There were way too many shirts for a queen-size quilt, plus my friend’s daughter was teeny-tiny and her husband a tad larger – which meant I could not make uniform blocks out of all of the shirts – I was going to have to border some of hers and use all of his. Then there were the small logos on the fronts of shirts and the larger t-shirt images on the backs – and the daughter wanted both the fronts and backs of those shirts used. Not impossible, of course, but somewhat awkward – especially if most of the fronts of the shirts were from her husband’s shirts and very few from hers.

This is a college Greek t-shirt quilt. The husband was in a fraternity and his wife (my friend’s daughter) was in a sorority. They met through their Greek associations, he pinned her with a lavalier (definition) from his fraternity and they married after they graduated from college. They wanted a t-shirt quilt to show how their college Greek ties brought them together.

t-shirt

I *finally* finished their quilt top this past week. I will admit, I did it under pressure. Our friends were driving to the big city near us and wanted to get together for a meal while they were in town. If possible, she also wanted to see the quilt top, if I had finished it. (ahem – blush) I forced myself to work on the quilt top for five straight days. Before I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, it was no biggie for me to be able to complete such a quilt top in a day or a weekend – but that just isn’t the case anymore. But, as we all know from the turtle and the hare, as long as I set daily realistic goals, I could make it. The biggest problem, however, was trying to photograph it when it was finished! It was too long (or our living room ceilings were too short) to get the entire quilt top in a photo. When I downloaded the photos I took, every single one of them had part of the bottom border folded over a tad on our carpet. I have now decided that when I’m finished with the quilt, we’ll have to move our base-of-photo-operations to either my MIL’s high deck on the back of her house (she calls it her treehouse porch) or hold it up in her living room. There’s no way to get the whole quilt in a photo from our house!

Another interesting factoid with this quilt became quite apparent when I was figuring in the final borders. I wanted the t-shirts to be front and center so they could easily be seen on a bed. Which meant the side borders had to be quite big (11″ each for the left and right borders). The top and bottom borders are much smaller (5″) because of the number of shirts that were placed in the center portion of the quilt top. I started cutting out those final borders and realized I may have miscalculated the fabric yardage I needed. I believe I initially purchased four yards of the fabric the daughter chose for her quilt top. Then I had one more yard that was in my own quilt fabric stash, and I needed to use it for the borders, too. When all was said and done and I had sweated through the lengths of the border strips I needed to make, this is how much fabric was leftover:

end

Whew, I really cut that close! Unfortunately, that 2 1/2″ x WOF strip is not enough to bind the quilt…nor is it enough to make an extra little special surprise for the married kids. I immediately sent a photo of the fabric to my local quilt shop, asking if they still had that fabric. Whew again – they did, and they even had enough so I could get two yards of it! I decided I didn’t want to make the binding out of the same fabric so I ordered a black fabric for the binding.

In the end, I just want the happy couple to use and love their quilt. That will bring me joy.

Flashback Tuesday: Calendar Quilt from BOMquilts.com

Posted on January 13, 2015 by TK HarrisonJanuary 12, 2015

What a fun and challenging quilt for my 2007 block of the month quilt design from BOMquilts.com was! The design itself was a challenge because there were a lot of squares in the quilt. It was also a challenge because we were living in our camper (two adults, four kids, two dogs). All of my quilting supplies were stored under our bed so I’d get everything I needed out before my husband laid down. Then I would set up my sewing, cutting and ironing stations from the dining area to the living area. To say it was cramped quarters is putting it mildly! But, I did it – and it is still beautiful! Go ahead, have some fun with this Calendar Quilt from BOMquilts.com!

“Calendar Quilt” designed by TK Harrison for BOMquilts.com

What a Feeling to Pay it Forward from a Simple Goal!

Posted on January 8, 2015 by TK HarrisonJanuary 5, 2015

I really do not like to call attention to myself for sharing the talents and gifts I have been gifted with and then paying it forward with donations. I believe we are to give without calling attention to ourselves. But a goal was reached this year, despite everything, and I am extremely happy that I was able to do what I set out to do. My goal was to make a quilt top a month for our church’s Lutheran World Relief quilt efforts. I didn’t do it alone. Far from it. My secret special person, who has sent me $20 a month since I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease four years ago, played a part in this goal. I used most of those funds from 2014 to purchase fabric with. My foster mother played a part in this goal. She visited our house in November and she pieced three of the quilt tops for me. My family played a part in this goal. They allowed me the time to cut and sew these quilt tops together. And with every single quilt top I pieced, I prayed for whomever and whatever was on my mind – it is always my special time to reach out to God with each stitch I made.

A goal was reached. By me. In the four years since my diagnosis, I have not been able to make a goal and fulfill it. Too many distractions, too many doctor’s appointments, too many extracurricular activities, too many painful days – all of that adds up to not enough time, energy or gumption for me to deal with any goals I may have had.