Finished: "Birds for Gramma" Embroidered Silk Wall Quilt

Birds for Gramma, 14 1/4" x 19 3/4"

In the midst of my Back-to-School Moping, I managed to finish this little wall quilt as a (belated) gift for my Gramma's 91st birthday.  This is the first machine embroidery project I did with the Jumbo Hoop on my Bernina 750 QE machine.  I enlarged and recolored the Anita Goodesign embroidery design (from their Fantasy Birds Collection Special Edition design pack, available here) for a ME Blog Hop back in March, and then I machine quilted the feathers and pebbles a few months later with the BSR foot on my 750 QE as a FMQ challenge exercise in June.  I loved how it turned out, but wasn't sure what to do with it until I was trying to figure out what to send my grandmother for her 91st birthday and my Aunt Debbie suggested "something sentimental."  My gramma was recently moved from her apartment to another care facility where she can get the additional assistance she now requires, but she has a much smaller room and has had to give up a lot of her possessions with this move.  I had Lars and Anders each select one of their best paintings from the art portfolios that came home from school in June to send to Gramma so they could be hung on her walls to decorate and brighten up her new living space.  And I trimmed the edges of this diminutive birdie quilt, added a hanging sleeve, and bound it with a 1/2" finished width red silk dupioni binding to give the effect of a frame.



I really like the dimension and texture I got with this piece, which I quilted very densely around the embroidery design using Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting and YLI #100 silk thread.  The silk base fabric is a lightweight silk shantung drapery remnant from Kravet that came with those gold glitter flecks on it.

I've never put a hanging sleeve on a quilt before and, as with most things I get nervous about and avoid attempting, it turned out not to be a big deal, after all.  I hope Gramma enjoys this.  I'm sure she will love the pictures the boys made!

One more thing: as much as we quilters tend to agonize over and feel guilty about our "works-in-progress" or "unfinished objects," it was really nice to have something almost finished on hand that I could pull out and complete for this gift.  The reason I hadn't finished it in the first place was that I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it, but as soon as I knew it was for my Gramma's nursing home wall, I knew exactly what needed to be done.  With that in mind, I may be INTENTIONALLY stockpiling an assortment of UFO projects from now on!