Sister Quilts!

It feels so good to finally be able to post about these two quilts.  They are gifts, and they've been given, so I'm in the clear.  My dear friend Linda lost her brother, suddenly and unexpectedly, a couple years ago.  He was a wonderful guy in every way you can imagine, and a loving brother.  A few months ago, Linda & her hubby brought out five shirts - five HUGE shirts, as John was a huge guy.  Linda asked me if I would use the shirts to make a quilt, a quilt that she would give to her sister for Christmas.  I sent her a bunch of quilt styles, hoping she would give me an idea what she was looking for.  Nope, not really.  She pretty much left it up to me.  It took a few weeks of pondering before I finally came up with a semi-plan that took a life of it's own once I got started. 

In the column on the right, there are 6 pieces. The bottom piece came from the inside of the back yoke of the shirt - the color was a little different, so I threw it in there, but it's stands alone - there was very little. But the other 5 pieces in that row represent the five shirts, and are scattered throughout the inner block. You can see the shirt colors lacked the typical scale of values that we look for in most fabric selections. So I asked Linda if she would mind if I threw in a few colors to spice it up, and again, she was happy to let me do my thing. The neutrals that surround the inner block are from the Moda Sandcastle jelly roll. -

The quilt surprised me - it just came out better than I had hoped, and I was nervous about making a pretty quilt for Linda to give her sister; one that was pretty, but retained some masculinity in memory of John.  I was also suprised at how much shirt fabric I had left!  And I was struck with the idea that Linda need a little John Love of her own! So, unbeknownst to her, I set out to come up with a second random quilt for her.  I love Flying Geese, but haven't yet done a quilt with them (but I will.....).  I decided to start there, and again, these things just take on off on their own once you get going. It reminds me of English papers in college.  Once you finally decide on a topic sentence... the rest is easy.  I really wanted one tall curved column of Flying Geese, but I'm not that good yet, so I went w/ 4 straight columns.