As every quilter knows, the true value of a handmade quilt far exceeds the monetary price tag that could be placed upon it. During Christmas 2017, I quilted about 10 quilts for customers to give as gifts. Four of them presented a particularly interesting challenge.
Memory Quilts
These particular quilts were made as gifts for family members as a remembrance of their father’s/son’s passing. Four identical lap quilts made from his shirts. How to quilt each to reflect the personality of the recipient was the specific challenge. The customer left it up to my discretion, which can be both a blessing and a curse. I was very pleased with the results and in the end, created 4 beautiful and cherished quilts.
Christmas Decor
This quilt was a tag-team effort with my sister. She is an awesome cross-stitcher. We teamed her stitching skills with my quilting quilting skills to come up with this quilted Christmas tree, made of cross-stitched Christmas trees. This was also my first experience with “bling-ing” a quilt with rhinestones. It was so much fun and much easier than I thought. I look forward to finding the right project to use them again.
Quilting for Primary Children’s Hospital
Each year, the Festival of Trees is held in Salt Lake City. Hundreds of trees displayed and auctioned to benefit the Primary Children’s Hospital. Millions of dollars are raised each year to benefit the hospital and help provide patient care for families. This year, I was asked to quilt a vintage tablecloth, turned tree skirt to go around one of the trees to be displayed and quilt a few panel, wall hangings which were sold in the gift boutique. 
Quilted Gifts
Three different customers brought quilts to be given to special family members. Two were gifts for special siblings and the other two were given to special grandsons. All in all, a lot of warmth being shared during this season of giving.
A Family-Style, Quilted Christmas
In September, my wife and I were wandering through our local Sam’s Club. Amid the king-size bags of chips and 6-month supply of Advil, we found a great selection of “Minkee” type of blankets that were 2/$12.99. The thought came to us they would make the perfect backs for lap quilts for our 4 children. After all, I’m not sure you can get a back measuring 60″ x 70″ for $6.50. A warm, cuddly quilt was going to be the gift of the season. So, we loaded up the cart with 6 blankets, enough for the whole family.
Of course, a wise quilter would have gotten started on the project straight away, but in my quilting world, it would become a task put off until nearly two weeks before Christmas. I did at least have the foresight to have all my customer quilting out the door and returned to customers by December 10th. It was shortly after the last customer quilt was completed that we decided to up the ante and create quilts for the members of my wife’s family that would be visiting, adding another 5 to the mix. So we needed to piece, quilt and bind 9 quilts by Christmas day Fortunate for us, we had a “UFO” only needing binding, and I had 2 tops already completed and ready for quilting.
So, the following 9 quilts were completed completely from our sizeable stash (with the exception of the minkee backs). The task was able to be completed with 9 minutes to spare on Christmas Eve. It was a very Merry Christmas!!
Uncle Paul's Quilting Company 