"Quilt as desired"

I always chuckle when I read quilt directions that say “quilt as desired.” I usually want a little more help than that because I’m afraid I’m going to ruin my beautiful quilt top, that my quilting will not be nice enough. In the case of my “Recovery Quilt,” I decided that complicated quilting would be lost in the busy fabrics. The directions for all three triangle quilts in Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts say to stitch-in-the-ditch around each patch, and that is exactly what I am doing with my triangle quilt, starting with the diagonal lines and then the grid lines. I plan to do free-motion outline quilting on the sunflowers in the border.


But there will be a temporary break in the quilting action so I can drive Genevieve and Danica from their house in Tennessee to mine in Missouri—a four-hour drive through the beautiful Ozark mountains. Wish me luck on the road. Heaven knows how many stops I will have to make with a chemo patient and a 4-year-old. Maybe they will sleep all the way.

Danica and the "Postage Stamp" doll quilt I made for her.