Category Archives: TK Harrison

Braxton’s Baby Quilt

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

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

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

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 four  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?




A Quilted God Moment

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

When our oldest daughter graduated from high school, I gifted her with a quilt I’d pieced especially for her. It just so happened that the summer before her senior year of high school, I went to Iowa to visit my (third) foster mother. She purchased all of the fabric for our daughter’s quilt and I cut it out & sewed it together while I was there. Then I left it with her so she could quilt it by hand.

Now here’s a little tidbit you probably didn’t know about our middle daughter – she’s our “what about me?” kid. Every time we would give her older sister something, no matter what it was, she always looked at us with sad puppy dog eyes and said, “What about me?”

About four years ago, she went with me to a quilt shop. While there, she fell in love with two different fabrics. The first was an antique-looking fabric with all sorts of postcards on it. Not the front of the postcards, but the back of them – the messages, addresses, stamps & postage meter stamps. The second fabric did not match the first as it was not antique-looking but it matched the general theme with stamps and postage meter stamps. Where the postcard fabric had a beige background, the stamp fabric had a white background. I purchased a yard of each and stuck them in a stash bin, knowing I would make a quilt for her out of them someday.

I started her quilt the summer before her senior year, too. Except it was one thing after another that year, so it became a UFO in short order. I’d pull it out and work on it, as time would permit, but I couldn’t pull it off in time for her graduation.

It took over a year but about three weeks before she was set to return to college for her sophomore year, she finally asked, “What about my quilt?” I brushed it off, ignored the question, changed the subject, etc. She didn’t ask me again. Then, the day before we were set to take her back to college, I surprised her with her graduation quilt – made out of the fabrics that she’d chosen all those years ago & using the Sawtooth Star quilt block pattern.

Sawtooth Star Quilt

The God moment happened after we started unloading her boxes in her dorm room. Since she had no clue that I was making her a quilt, and no clue what the colors in the quilt were, she had previously purchased sheets for her dorm bed that were the exact same colors as her quilt!

Written with love by TK Harrison




I’m Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee…

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

I recently made a precious quilt for a baby-to-be, embroidering his name and a stag head shot in the center of the quilt.

My dear friend Meloney quilted it for me, then sewed on the binding & whip-stitched it to the back. What a gem! Only thing I had left to do was to embroider the tag for the back of it and stitch it to the back of the quilt! I love making baby quilts! They are just timeless. And most parents keep them until their babies have babies of their own. Which means I am part of that child’s legacy. What a blessing it is, to be a quilter!