Missy's 50 !!!

Hi Everyone....as some of you know I had started a quilt several months ago to give my sister-in-law, Missy, who turned 50 in January 2009. She only told me that she wanted blue and yellow and I tried and tried to figure out a pattern. I decided to try a mixture of embroidery and quilting as several people had done this in my quilt class and I really liked the "look". I finally decided on a Triple Irish Chain quilt that had big enough center blocks that I could embroider on. Craig and I went through the Bible and picked out several meaningful words to place on the blocks. I deliberately placed the word LOVE in the center block because that's what this quilt symbolizes for me. LOVE....the love between and brother and a sister, the love between a mother and a daughter, and the love between sister-in-laws who became "sisters".

You probably can't see all the words here, and I hate to say I don't have them written down, but I used a varigated shiny blue thread that just made each word absolutely gorgeous. Now that the quilt top was made, I had to quilt it, which I did all on Bernie and it had to have "curly-Q's", because that's what Missy likes about my quilts are the "curly-Q's" or "stippling". Anyway, I did a mixture of straight stitching on the chain and curly-Q's in the border. Once the quilt was done I had to wait......and wait.....and wait...for her birthday !

Well, leave it to Missy, she didn't have a "normal" surprise 50th birthday party ! She did something else, true to her personality. She had a "girlfriend" party to celebrate all her girlfriends. It was truly a special day with special people ! She had her harp teacher there playing as we all arrived and a lady doing caricatures of all the ladies !!! It was really neat. I didn't want to arrive with the gift in my hand because that would have given it away so I had my mother-in-law take the gift home, wrap it and bring it to the party for me. However, it was like pulling teeth to get Missy to open up her gifts. As people were starting to leave, I kept asking Nicole (my niece) to make her mom open up her gifts. She finally sat down to do so....FINALLY!!! She was so surprised to actually see the quilt and thought that I had too much on my plate to make her one, which actually I do but I made this several months ago so I could have it ready for her big day. I'm so happy she likes it ....it's for you, Sis !

Now on to the next project, Cheryl's 60th. However, I have a few YEARS to get that one made....ha,ha,ha.

Love to all my family and friends,

Karene