A new quilt rack for a newly finished quilt!

My sweet, generous, and thoughtful husband has just finished making a quilt rack for me. He built it out of oak, stained it, and added a large doll rod to hand the quilt. It also has a 5-1/2-wide shelf on top so that I can also use it to display other things, like tea cups, glass figurines, etc...stuff that is now crowding other shelves or is taking up storage room in our closets...What a gift my husband is to me!

The first quilt to hang on this lovely new rack in our spare bedroom is one that I finished binding between Christmas and New Year's. It's called a "Laura's Quilt," and it features redwork embroidery that I finished back in 2002. I finished the quilting last summer, made the bias binding in early November, and finally found time the last weekend of December to bind it.

This quilt has so many precious memories for me. For one, it features embroidery with a Laura Ingall's Wilder theme, including Pa's fiddle, a water bucket, a jar of plum preserves, a bonnet, a butter churn, and even a little girl dressed like Laura and her sisters would have dressed in their time.

My mother each made a quilt like this, though Mom's was finished and hung in my parent's great room years ago. We started them together and worked on them when I went up north to visit her and Dad. It was hard to work on projects like this during the first couple of years after she died, but two years ago I started again, and it's been a blessing to see projects like this finally done...I couldn't help but think how happy Mom would be now if she could see this pretty quilt displayed on my lovely new quilt rack...I am very thankful.