I was blown away by the talent of my cousins Kathy Fitzgerald and Geri Pieper. Geri has entered her quilts in the Iowa State Fair and won third overall! These cousins live walking distance from each other in the countryside outside of Stuart, Iowa. They both love to select the designs and fabrics, piece the quilts and add the backing. But then they both send their quilts to be quilted by someone who loves machine quilting. This allows them to piece more quilts!
I enjoyed going through Kathy’s quilts with her. She is hand quilting one of her pieced quilts. It is going to take a long time, compared to machine quilting, but this particular quilt turned out too thick for machine quilting. Kathy is going to yell at me for including this photo of her since I dropped in and she wasn’t expecting to be on camera!
The quilting on the left is done by machine. And it is very impressive. But look at the quilting below. Kathy and my great/grandma Mildred quilted this one by hand. And it is far more intricate. We just shook our heads with full respect for how much time and talent that takes!
americanjulie.com 