Non Smokers Star

by Doris Willems
(Langenfeld/Rhl. Germany)

While my husband and I were driving through the States on vacation one year he asked me, "Shall we make a 'Fairy Tales' quilt?" He meant a quilt with lots of different Fairy Tale blocks. I took it as, "Yes! You might buy as much fabric as you like" and so I did. (I got way too much fabric, of course, for just one quilt, but that is another story.)

I never made a quilt before so I had to figure out how to put the pieces together in the first place. It took me a whole year just for the top. I looked at a beautiful quilt book about historical and Amish quilts to get an idea how to manage this.

I drew the whole pattern on paper in the real size, cut them all out and transferred the pieces on the fabric. I worked a lot on pin and needles to get the pieces exactly together.

The next thing I had to figure out was how to quilt it. I had seen the nice quilting furniture in the book, so I built a very big frame with wood on our terrace to get the whole quilt strapped in it.

For two summers I quilted on my terrace by hand, starting at the outside of the sandwich toward the middle, rolling more and more and strapping it down with cotton threads.
Of course I had a hard time to keep the quilt in shape while quilting it this way.

It got its name because I quit smoking while I was doing working on the quilt.

I am from Germany so excuse my mistakes in the English language.

If you want to see more of my work just visit my blog:

www.LintLady.blogspot.com

Happy Quilting!

Doris