Before I left my last post, I decided that I wanted to make a quilt for the staff that had worked with me. I made five quilts that are each unique but that relate to each other either in pattern or fabric. This, to me, symbolized the way that we all worked together, each of us bringing a unique set of gifts and skills to make a better whole.
This was the largest project that I had yet undertaken and it was a bit larger than I realized to complete it. But I was able to do so.
The quilt with the most varying colors, the one that ties all the others together, was made for the person who started off working as our Director or Religious Education and transitioned into our Community Minister.
This is an original block created by me using EQ8. When visiting Hudson, Ohio, I found a railing on a house that I really liked. It was a Chinese Chippendale railing of which I took a picture. I later worked out by hand and then with software what I call The Hudson Lattice.
In this quilt you can see all the fabrics from the other 4 quilts.
The purples feature most prominently in the the quilt I made for the one person on staff that I was able to hire. She is a joy to have in my life and I look forward to watching her continue to bloom as a professional. I also blame her for my Starbucks, I won't say addiction, but....
This was my first experience with rulers, and I was committed to having white on white stitching. I've always liked the look that happens with this kind of quilting. On the bottom white stripe I inscribed a message of encouragement and my signature in stitches.
This next quilt was made with great affection for one of the wisest souls I have ever known. I learned so much from this person in our 7 year working relationship and I will be forever grateful.
Here you can see the oranges from the top quilt are featured, as well as other colors up and down the strength scale. I had never made triangle blocks before and sometimes lining them up proved to be a bit challenging. I added more of the white quilting on white fabric here also, to help tie it further to the purple quilt.
I chose a bold backing for this quilt, and you can see I featured a fabric with black, gray, orange and brown in a long asymmetrical stripe. I also used this fabric for the binding. I chose to make bold fabrics because this person encourages me always to be bolder in the world, and this is a grateful acknowledgment for this.
The next quilt features fabric from the top quilt, and the quilt above it, but it shares its pattern with the last quilt in the series. I chose this quilt to make this bridge because these last two quilts were created for the musicians where I worked.
You'll see in this quilt almost ALL of the colors of the top quilt, and I've added corresponding solids to the batique that I used earlier.
I chose a pattern known to me as The Card Trick. I really enjoy the way this pattern creates an optical illusion, and it gave me an opportunity to mix solids into what I'd been working on. The border of this quilt is related to the Triangle Quilt's back stripe of oranges and blacks. I also am proud that I took the time to arrange the corner points so that they foreshadow the colors of the adjacent blocks.
The last of this series was made for a really swell guy who always has a Dad Joke handy. I repeated the Card Trick pattern for this quilt, but it shares no other fabric with the other quilts save the white that each of them has. I chose to build this quilt entirely from used mens' shirts, save one fabric. All of the light blues you see here are old Brooks Brothers shirts that I had been collecting, and the more colorful blues are various shirts that were either mine, or my husband's or from the local thrift store, including the shirt on the back.
With the power of the internet, I was able to find an old gas-station type name tag with his name and last initial for the pocket.
Having made the decision to applique this shirt onto the back of the quilt, I had to load the quilt onto our mid-arm, but upside down, so as to not accidentally hit a button, and break the needle or otherwise damage the machine.