One of the artistic elements that make the ADT-L Quilting Bee Projects really soar is the machine quilting.  This is the stitching you see  around the borders and inside the blocks.  This requires talent and lots of time.  This year, Christie Williams was the Bee member who worked relentlessly all summer to bring the quilt to life.

Christie was sent each of the individual blocks early this spring, she made sure that each and every block was the correct size and any additional stitching was done at this point by her. The quilt then traveled from Lafayette, Indiana, to Pensacola, Florida, where Carolyn Finlayson squared each of the blocks and then assembled the top of the quilt by attaching the blocks together and adding the border. The quilt then traveled back to Christie for the sandwiching, machine quilting and binding.
 

This is indeed a labor of love requiring many hours of hard work at the sewing machine, working with a quilt that is almost a 6’ square. Each block is machine quilted by Christie, giving it more personality and getting the Airedale and his “AireLifted” item to pop from the background and the sashing. All the sashing and borders are also done in free motion machine embroidery.  (This means the quilter is creating the designs with the stitching AS she stitches by moving the quilt – the sewing machine does not create the designs).

Christie’s talent shines in and around each individual block.  With the use of variegated threads, she has highlighted each block.  The different designs created with freehand machine embroidery by Christie give us the playful and exuberant feeling we all get with watching our own Airedale “airelifts” a new and exciting prize.

Since Christie has a real day job as a Professor of Entomology and a USDA Scientist at Purdue University, we’re very lucky that she agreed to take on a FULL TIME – SUMMER JOB, doing the machine quilting on “AireLifted”, bringing more beauty to the quilts and enhancing our Quilting Bee’s beautiful blocks.

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