Four Pictorial Quilts – Each a Unique Design

Bora Bora Quilt

When one lady sent her husband’s clothes to me to make a quilt, she had an unusual request. She said she wanted the quilt to be made only from the sleeves of the shirts and jackets, if possible, so that she would feel as if her husband’s arms were around her when wrapped in her quilt. I thought it was a sweet idea and since I had plenty of shirts and jackets to work with, I had no problem honoring her request.

She said she wanted a simple picture – a calm and restful scene of Bora Bora where they had spent their honeymoon only three years before he died. It was a short but very loving marriage although the two had known each other over a span of thirty years.

There was one exception to the “only shirt sleeves” request:  the tie and handkerchief that Bill wore at the wedding were included. From them I made the Bora Bora hut shown in the detail above.

The Forest Quilt

Recently I was given the beautiful clothes of a lovely lady, wife and mother, who had recently died. Her husband chose to honor her by having quilts made for both his grown son and grown daughter, themselves parents of children now grown up.

After a discussion with the daughter about her mother, together we chose two themes – woodland and dance – both being very meaningful to the lady who loved to dance and who lived in a house in the woods high up in the hills.

Below is the pictorial quilt made for the son who lives on a farm and loves the outdoors.

I used 30 items of clothing to make this quilt and deliberately had the water flow right off the quilt.  I used Ruth B. McDowell’s method of paper piecing the background (read more under Appliqued Quilts in my Blog) and then appliqued extra details onto the finished patchwork.

Below are photos showing features in the design of the quilt. To enlarge the pictures, doubleclick on any picture.

The Dancing Lady Quilt

The second quilt,  made for the daughter, embodied the dance theme. When I saw a picture of a lady leaping over water the sunset behind her, I knew it was the perfect feature for this quilt – a dancing lady who embodies the feeling of hope and spirit.

This quilt combines the traditional quilt (with a split 9×3 inch block) with the art quilt – in this case the lady dancing amongst the bluebirds. About twenty different items were used to make this quilt, many of them t-shirts or knits. Also, I changed the background from sunset to sunrise so that I could mirror the night sky in the deep of the sea.

Closeups of the quilt are shown below. To enlarge the pictures, doubleclick on any picture.

Story of a Life

The quilt below is the third example of my own design, revealed to the client upon completion.

The pictures below depict the progress of a pictorial quilt I made for a mother whose vibrant 35-year-old daughter was brutally murdered. The mother couldn’t bear to part with the daughter’s clothes, whose bright colors and both sophisticated and playful designs mirrored the lively young lady who had forged a new life for herself in Alaska, but she thought a quilt made of her daughter’s clothes would be the answer to keeping the clothes near.  This king-size quilt was made to be hung on the wall or used on a bed.

The slideshow below takes you through the design process: first step was studying the clothes to get a sense of the lady who wore them, next came the designing the quilt using a flannel-covered wall.  Some times I have the design worked out in advance but in this case I let the clothes guide the process. The construction of the patchwork follows, and finally, the patchwork top is quilted on my longarm machine, a border added and the finished quilt produced.

This quilt depicts the daughter lying against a brown tree trunk beside another black tree trunk and looking out over the city of Anchorage and the mountains of Alaska beyond. Her house she so proudly bought is shown on the right. A picture of her mother and her, as a toddler, astride a family horse is set against of fan of her colorful skirts. At the bottom is the familiar poem, a favorite of the mother’s, which begins: “Do not stand on my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep . . . .”  The poem is embroidered on a yellow sleeveless dress, which was the dress her daughter was wearing the last time they met. Tires are made from buttons, lace and collars are used to make roads and walkways.  Even the woodpecker’s markings come from an epaulet on a jacket.

Thirty-two Illustrious red hearts against black backgrounds form the border symbolizes the daughter’s warmth, vitality, and love of animals and people. To enlarge the pictures, doubleclick on any picture.

To produce a pictorial quilt, it is necessary to learn about the loved one who wore the clothes.  My client was generous with notes and pictures to guide me through the process.