Saturday, March 19, 2011

Noriko's Bear Paw Quilt

THE STORY OF NORIKO'S BEAR PAW QUILT - 

Noriko - 2002

Hand-made the templates - hand-drew and hand-cut the patches - and hand-pieced eleven "Bear Paw" blocks and two corner units of a twelfth block.  Before moving to England - she gave the completed blocks and cut patches to her friendly, neighborhood accountant -

Kitty(Me) - 2009

Who machine-pieced the two remaining corner units of the twelfth block - altering the design slightly** - and assembled the quilt top with alternating plain muslin blocks.  (The better to show off Noriko's beautiful blocks!)


Kitty(I) used the remaining cut patches to machine-piece three more blocks for the backing - assembled the backing - prepared the binding - the hanging sleeve - and the label.

(I wanted it to be easy to distinguish between the blocks that had been hand-pieced by Noriko and the blocks that had been machine-pieced by me.)


Kitty(I) then sent the quilt to her(my) friend -

Mary - 2009

Who machine-quilted the quilt on her long-arm quilting machine and hand-stitched the binding, the hanging sleeve, and the label.  She then returned the quilt to Kitty(me) who then returned it to Noriko to enjoy - finally finished and looking good - with a little help from her friends.



(The pattern used was Deb's Feathers -
with white thread so as not to detract from the blocks on the front.  It shows up beautifully on the dark green on the back of the quilt.)

(Here's a closeup of one of Noriko's blocks)


===========
** Just for fun - which block is the twelfth block?
===========

Anyway - that's what the label says - (The stuff in parentheses is extra info for this blog post.)

But there's more to the story - 

Epilogue -

Kitty(I) emailed Noriko to double check her address before actually mailing the quilt to her.  Noriko replied and graciously declined the offer of the quilt - she had meant it for me to keep!!  When she came back to California on vacation that fall, she included a visit to me - and was able to see the final quilt.  (She still insisted that I keep it!)  We had a very nice visit!

And - as my sister said - "I got to see my friend - and - I got to keep the quilt!"

This quilt is truly special - and I will always think of it as Noriko's quilt.  All of that hand-work is simply amazing!!  You really should see it up close!

And - at meinca-mainer's suggestion - I entered this quilt in the Weekly Themed Contest - so - once again - VOTE FOR ME!!  Thanks!!



Talk to you later - gotta go - gotta sew -











1 comment:

Judee said...

AHa! The bottom center block on the front is the 12th block as it has fewer points than all the others. And I never should have told you to enter that contest!lol

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