Category Archives: Quilting by Mel

A Baby Quilt Fit for a Grand Baby!

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No, not MY grand baby, silly! 🙂 A friend’s grand baby or, better than that, her soon-to-be  grandson.

Pieced and Machine Embroidered Baby Quilt




Braxton’s Nana chose the fabrics based on the colors her daughter wanted to use in his nursery. I designed the quilt top and embroidered Braxton’s name (with help) and the head shot on the center quilt block. Meloney Funk quilted the quilt on her longarm, using freehand leaves to signify the stag walking through a forest and since she knew I had two or three quilts due at about the same time, she also took care of the binding for me! She’s a keeper!

Braxton lives in the southwest so he probably won’t need his quilt until November. I hope he isn’t too big for it by then!

   

Then I mentioned to my friend that since she’d already paid for the embroidery files, I could embroider them on just about anything that would be needed for a baby – burp cloths, bibs, onesies, cloth diapers – you name it, I can usually embroider on it. She gave it a thought and decided he could use some bibs so she ordered them and had them sent to me. I stitched them out and they were so very adorable!

Braxton's Embroidered Bibs

Braxton’s mommy loved all of his gifts and now that Braxton is three month’s old, he’s getting some good use out of his bibs.




Tarleton State University Embroidered Quilt

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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

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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




Striped Independence

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I have to say, this is the absolute best quilted piece I’ve created.  With my Sew N’Slashâ„¢ method of piecing each block, not only do they come together quickly – the points are near-perfect!  And to have it published in the April 2015 issue of The Quilt Pattern Magazine makes this even more special.  I think it’s a keeper!

Striped Independence – an Original Design and Free Quilted Table Runner Pattern by TK Harrison, Owner of BOMquilts.com
Celebrate every patriotic holiday with this beautiful red, white and blue table runner!  The possibilities for larger quilt pieces is endless!

Special thanks to my longarm quilter, Meloney!  And to my fabric supplier, Linda at AbbiMays.com!

No Words, Just Phenomenal Quilting!

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I recently received my BOMquilts.com 2015 block of the month quilt back from my longarmer, Meloney.  I had to pick my jaw up from the floor more than once as the quilting detail just blew me away!  I am still in the ‘stroking’ stage, not quite ready to bind the quilt.  I just want to admire her work.  Again, there are no words…

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