Elaine Quilts Too!

I want to introduce you to my kids, or at least give you an update of what each of them is up to these days. With my girls, I will highlight their quilting prowess; with my son, I’ll have to tell you of his writing and bread baking exploits, since he hasn’t sat at a sewing machine since he was about 9 years old or so.

Let me start with Elaine.

One of my favorite photos

Elaine is my second child and oldest daughter. She recently graduated from BYU-I with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. She and her husband just moved from Idaho to Salt Lake City, Utah so her husband could start a new job. She is not working right now as they are a one car family and her husband needs the car. This leaves Elaine with time on her hands to sew to her heart’s content!

Out of my three daughters, Elaine shows the most interest in following in my quilting footsteps! She has always been the most adventurous, too, not waiting around for me to show her how to do something on the machine. If she wanted to make something and I wasn’t around, she just looked up a YouTube tutorial and forged ahead.

She started her quilting journey with a simple baby quilt for a ballet teacher. Then, Keepsake Quilting started having a junior challenge every year. Both my older girls participated in those. Elaine even won first place in 2008 with this little quilt:

Keepsake sent a little kit of the panel and other fabrics. You were allowed to add one. Elaine came up with this setting and added the cat silhouettes that were left over from another project. Those panel pictures were a pain to use because they were not printed squarely on the fabric. As an adult, I was only allowed to help with the cutting. She did everything else, but even with me cutting, the quilt did not end up square. I honestly didn’t think she had much chance of winning, so I was very surprised when she told me she won! I guess everyone else had trouble too!

Here’s her ribbon!

She also won $300 if I remember correctly; or more accurately, she won a gift certificate for that amount. She chose to spend it on McKenna Ryan’s Sea Breeze quilt kits.

It’s still available for sale! Just click on the title above and it will take you to McKenna’s website.

Just last year (almost 10 years after choosing them), I sent those kits to her in her new home. Maybe she will be able to get around to doing them now!

 

Unfortunately, that was the last year that Keepsake offered the kids challenge. However, they still offer the regular challenge every year if you are interested!

The summer that my husband and I took our 25th anniversary trip, Elaine decided to start a quilt with the leftovers from a quilt she made the year before. When we got home, this is what she had completed:

Those tiny squares were all individually cut and pieced! They are 1/2 inch finished. She meant for them to be an inch square, but in her excitement to get started, she cut them all at an inch! Bring the determined girl that she is, she kept going, meticulously sewing, ripping and sewing again to get all the squats perfectly pieced together. That completed square is a total of 9 inches! Isn’t it great when you are brand new to quilting and don’t know that something is supposed to be too hard for a beginner?

 

That was as far as she got that summer besides planning what she would do with that little checkerboard. I think we may have also gone out and bought the accent color she wanted. Over the next year or two, she worked on the quilt whenever she had time, not finishing it until her second year of college, I think!

 

Not the best photo, but it’s what I have.

Next post: Lynette!

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