When someone in our “Bloom Where You Are Planted” quilt bee moves we make them a house quilt as a parting gift. It is an expression of our love for all the years we have been together. Friendship and quilting are a lot like Super Glue … a powerful bonding agent. Since I’ve been a member of the bee there have been four “house” quilts made. The last one was for Jan. I blogged about Jan’s quilt some time back. We had to mail her quilt as she sold her house so fast one day she was with us and the next … gone. We decided to use the same “house” pattern. If I remember correctly, the pattern came out of one of Loretta’s quilting books. We all loved it … and changed the colors up a bit for Loretta.

When we learned Loretta was moving. we immediately went into hyper-quilting mode. We were determined to get Loretta’s quilt finished before she left us. After assembling the top and basting the quilt, we turned it over to Tina who machine quilted it and made the awesome patch on the back. I don’t know who sewed the binding on. I was out of that loop but I have to say the quilt turned out awesome!

This week at our annual Christmas bee we presented Loretta with her quilt. I don’t think she saw the surprise coming as we also exchanged little gifts and celebrated Tina’s birthday. We are sneaky like that.