NEW YORK BEAUTY

For several years I quilted Quilts of Valor that Sue Bennett had created.  Sue would donate the material and the work, and I would donate the quilting.  Then she would put on the binding and send it in to the QOV people, who would then send it on to a wounded soldier.  At some point, Sue started sending me her personal quilts.  Now she's sending me her friends, and they compliment me by sending their quilts.

The stunning New York Beauty above is an example of Kay McA's work.  Kay is a careful piecer, and apparently a very patient one, too.  The reason I know this is that her sewing is very precise, but also, she has waited an inordinate amount of time to get her quilt finished.  I received it from her in mid-August.  My Intelliquilter robotics tablet was in California having some upgrading work done on the battery compartment.  This was supposed to take one week.  It took four, so I didn't get started on Kay's quilt until early September.

There followed several unexpected mishaps:  we had an earthquake, followed a few days later by hurricane Irene and three days of power outages.  After two days of cleanup around here, tropical storm Lee hit, and another power outage occurred.  Even with a generator, I wouldn't dare start up my Nolting 24 Pro, fearing surges and the like that could permanently damage the machine and/or the Intelliquilter.

As soon as the property was recleaned from Lee, I had commitments to five classes that I needed to attend or sponsor.  One of these was hosting Marilyn Doheny for my guild.  Marilyn gave a fabulous trunk show one day and a stimulating, exciting class the next.  She stayed with me during this time, and because her next show and class wasn't until the next week, her visit stretched to a full week.  This is a real treat for any quilter who loves getting her creative juices flowing, and we had a wonderful visit, cooking, sewing, visiting quilt shops, and getting Marilyn rested up from her month long marathon of traveling.  But it didn't get this quilt done.

Here's a picture of the center NYB.  If you click on the picture, you can enlarge it quite a bit to be able to see the stippling in the wedges between the blades of the star.  Around the outer shell are triangle shaped feathers to fill the setting block, and inside the inner circle is a feathered wreath with a small star in it. I created all of these designs for Kay with my Intelliquilter. 

At each corner of the central star is a three-quarter star.  The stippling was the same here, as were the corner treatments, but, again, I had to fashion a three-quarter wreath for these wrap around NYB's.

As the array of NYB's expanded, there were also half-wreaths needed.  My IQ helped me create these to fit smoothly in the half circles.

Kay's quilt has eight rows of Beauties; each row took nearly 5 hours to do:  four for the stippling wedges and one for the feathered accents.

So now this one is finished, and although it has been on my frame for six weeks with all the interruptions from weather, mishap and hostessing, I am sorry to see it go.  It is a visually compelling quilt, and one that Kay will be proud of forever.