Yes, my father has hand pieced yet another giant quilt. That makes three in the last year or something like that. Feeling inadequate yet? Yeah. Me too.

Like the first one, this one was hand pieced by my father, quilted (beautifully) by the lovely ladies of Quilting Plus Amish Hand Quilting (I can not recommend them highly enough!), and bound by me. This quilt measures 95″ x 84″. Yeah. It’s HUGE.

I know this quilt is destined for my sister, so she may have had some say in the design of it. The last time there wasn’t an overall plan to the arrangement of the fabrics, but this time there clearly is. I love how he has alternated sections of florals with sections of stripes. Those stripes are just so yummy!

I took it to the shop the day before Thanksgiving to pick out fabric for the binding and everyone wanted to see it. Ev-ry-one. Lots of mouths hanging open and the like, because it’s just that amazing in person. All those little points lined up perfectly. Spectacular.

You can also view some photos of three quilts my father pieced, quilted, and bound entirely himself, entirely by hand, during the 1980′s here, here, and here. Enjoy!

Stunning, no?

This quilt was hand pieced by my father. He chose all fabrics with flowers of some kind. Show this to any guy you know who says he doesn’t want anything with flowers!

The hand quilting was done by Fannie Borntreger of Quilting Plus, an Amish hand quilting company in Rochester, MN. It’s top notch.

The French fold bias binding (in Kona cotton lagoon) was machine stitched to the front and hand finished on the back by yours truly. It only needs a label to be complete.

Previous posts about this quilt are here (before quilting) and here (after quilting, before binding).

My favorite hand quilters have created another masterpiece. Simple outline quilting of each diamond. Executed perfectly.

The best part of this quilt may actually be that the back is nearly as gorgeous as the front.

I have attached the binding and I’m ready to hand sew it to the back. It’s going to be Kona cotton lagoon, which matches the bright blue color in the images above. I can’t wait to see this all finished!

Happy Monday to you all!

So, last Friday afternoon, a package arrived on my doorstep. Said package contained none other than my father’s latest hand-pieced quilt top. He’s left it to me to get the top finished into an actual quilt.

We talked here about two months ago about hand quilting versus machine quilting and what might be the best way to finish this top. In the end, I came down on the side of “I’ll see what it looks like when it’s finished and decide then what quilting will best complement the top.”

Now that it has arrived, I can actually make a decision!

It’s about 80 inches wide and 87 inches long. It’s made up of little diamond shapes. If placed a certain way, three of these little shapes together make a hexagon. Every piece of fabric in the quilt has some kind of flowers in it. Here’s a shot with me in it, just for scale (and because it’s fun to play with the timer on the camera!).

Did I mention yet that I think it’s just gorgeous??!?!!!

His other quilts were backed with muslin, and he’s indicated that he figured this one would be backed with muslin as well. That’s fine. I can do that if that’s what he wants. It certainly won’t detract from the top that way!

Now, my father has said that he pretty much expects me to just take care of having someone else do the quilting, but I would REALLY love to quilt this myself, one way or another.

There is no rush to get this completed in any certain amount of time, so in theory I *could* try to hand quilt it. Though I probably won’t have time to start working on quilting this between now and Christmas, and I suspect it could take me years to get it done if I hand quilted it.

It all comes down to one question — what quilting would look best??

I’d love to hear your suggestions!