Quilt Therapy Story – Page 2

Tarleton State University Embroidered Quilt

Posted on May 17, 2018 by TK HarrisonMay 12, 2018

When your daughter asks you to make a quilt, there is no better compliment. When she asks you to make her a quilt for a charity that she’s involved with, it takes it to a higher level!

For her freshman year of college at Tarleton State University (TSU) in 2017, she was the Hall Council Chair for the Honors College with the Residence Hall Association (RHA). She asked me to make a quilt that they could raffle off to the students, to bring more recognition to RHA. As we talked more and more about it, and as she talked with the RHA board of directors, they decided they’d like to have a quilt that included the logos of a number of groups around campus as well as the core values of the university.

They sent me the logos and I hired a digitizer to create the files that would work with my embroidery machine. Some of them worked the first time she digitized them. Unfortunately, for many of them, we had to go back and forth – her digitizing, me test-stitching, just to get them correct. But in the end, I met my deadline and the quilt was delivered with plenty of time for the RHA to raffle it off!

And just to add another kudo to my dear friend Meloney, her longarm quilting was icing on the Tarleton State University RHA raffle quilt cake!

Tarleton Quilt

RHA raffle quilt with the core values and 12 logos of TSU

Tarleton Quilt

Closeup of a TSU logo on the RHA raffle quilt

Tarleton Quilt

RHA quilt on the bed of the young lady who won it in the raffle

I’d also like to take just a wee bit of credit as my daughter received the Hall Council Chair award with the RHA at the end of her freshman year, and she was voted in as the vice president of the RHA for her sophomore year at TSU!

Braxton’s Baby Quilt

Posted on May 10, 2018 by TK HarrisonMay 9, 2018

When you get the opportunity to make a baby quilt for a long-time friend’s soon-to-be grandson, the pleasure begins with choosing the design. But it doesn’t end with delivering the quilt. No, it doesn’t end for a very long time – more like when that soon-to-be baby has a child of their own and you ask them if they still have the baby quilt you made for them when THEY were a baby! I’ve had the pleasure of finding that out within the last year and the thrill of knowing someone has saved their baby quilt (or their parents did) that you made them 18 or more years ago is over-the-top quilted love!

Braxton needed a baby quilt. The fabric color choices were not something I would choose as there were light’s and dark’s but no medium shades of fabrics. But the quilt grew on me as I sewed it together. And when I added the machine embroidery, that helped, too. The final thing that clinched my love for this quilt was when my dear friend Meloney quilted it (and added the binding!) for his quilt.

I rarely ask Meloney to quilt a quilt with any specific pattern. In fact, I can only think of two instances, in the 10+ years I’ve known her, where I’ve done so. She prefers to let the quilt talk to her and tell her what pattern to quilt it in. For Braxton’s quilt, once she saw the deer stag head shot, she felt quilting it with leaves was appropriate as it would signify a deer walking through a forest. And she was absolutely right!

Braxton's Baby Quilt

It’s All in the Quilt Tag

Posted on May 3, 2018 by TK HarrisonApril 28, 2018

I made a machine embroidered and pieced quilted wall hanging that I sold to a dear friend, Joan, from Utah (we lived there from 1999 – 2006). The proceeds of that quilt will go towards our youngest daughter and her BFF who plan to go on a mission trip to Denver in June with our church group.

Embroidered & Pieced Quilt Designed & Made by TK Harrison, Quilted by Meloney Funk

In the four corners of the quilt are machine embroidered Luther Roses:

Another dear friend, Meloney, quilted the wall hanging for me. It’s not so easy to see in the photo above, but for each of the embroidered areas, she stitched lines from the roses or crosses outward toward each of the fabric borders. It makes them appear to be suspended in midair, or to have rays of sunshine beaming off of them. Absolutely beautiful quilting!

But the fun part of the quilt is on the back. Joan is originally from that one city over yonder to the east, one of the ones with fourÂ professional sports teams – baseball, football, basketball & hockey. It starts with the letter “P”. The football team she’s been rooting for her ENTIRE LIFE *finally* won the super bowl earlier this year. Their first super bowl win EVER!!!

Now, Joan enjoys a good laugh. She always had a joke ready for my husband when we’d go to church or he’d have one ready for her. She and my husband really got along great and that always put a smile on both of their faces. Which made me love her all the more!

When it came to writing out and embroidering her quilt tag, I knew I needed to make it fun and honor her favorite football team. Here’s what I came up with – can you figure out what I did?