Artists and creatives are givers. We're the ones to make the decorations and favors for your bridal showers, we handmake your babies their first blankets and warmth, we donate our wares and talents to your PTA's and charity events with wealthy CEOs and local businessmen that could very well fund the things themselves, and we begrudgingly help you hem your pants.
We just want things to be special.
There seems to be this phenomenon where once a person learns their craft, they stop receiving that item from others out of the assumption that they can make it for themselves, so why would we want someone else to make it?
Well, my sister-in-law, Lacie of Messy Quilts, and I decided that we were going to gift one another quilts for this very reason!
The parameters
Before heading out to the fabric shop to grab our fabrics to make one another's quilts, we agreed upon intended usage, size, and a deadline: Christmas. Once we decided on these details, we went about our lives and got right to work on it - er, I mean we bought fabric, designed and then put these quilts out of our minds until roughly November. When the holidays rolled nearer, we finally got down to business!
Gifting Time...
Well, Christmas rolled around, and I received this gorgeous vintage cassette tape pixel quilt that Lacie had assembled using the Easy Piecing Grid complete with Moda Grunge galore and her signature zigzag binding!
Lacie, on the other hand, received a quilt top with quarter square triangles in a disintegrating heart shape sans the paper pieced letters I had given her a sneak peek of, and she had to give it back to me afterward! Classic me to just disregard a deadline. Anyway, life got a bit busy, and if you're a quilter, you know that once you stop working on a project, it almost always becomes harder to begin working on it again.
Eventually, I did work up the energy to piece the letters into their phrase and cut the banner that I would then curve piece into the original quilt top. I sent it to be long-arm quilted by our wonderfully talented friend Barbie, who knows us both, and who I'm so happy could be a part of this quilt's creation!
Now that it was nearly two months past Christmas, I could finally gift this completed quilt to my dear sister-in-law and relish in her surprise over the wicked and morbid phrase that had now appeared on her once plain quilt!
Gift to your creatives
While we both probably could have made our own quilts that we received, the point was that we probably never would have. My most favorite quilts are the ones that I've been gifted by the quilters in my life and they are so much more precious than the random quilts that I have floating around my home that I've made.
I'm not saying that your time and efforts in giving these beautiful hand-created works are wasted (of course they aren't!) I'm just making the case for us all to love on the people in our lives that can "probably do it themselves" a little bit more this year and surprise them with our caringness.
Do you have a quilter friend in your life that could use this type of gift this year?
Tag me on Instagram or drop me an email if you decide to take up your fabric and make something special for a fellow quilter! I would love to see what you're up to!
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