A Family of Quilts

Back in the fall, a woman from Alaska named Bhree contacted me and offered up a challenge: to create 7 memorial quilts out of the clothing of 3 family members who had died over the course of a decade, and whose deaths spanned 3 generations. Each quilt was to be given to 7 family members still living. I heartily accepted the challenge, and thus began a 4-month project that yielded a stunning set of quilts for a family intimately familiar with grief.

I have decided to write about these quilts in 3 different blog posts so I can focus on 2-3 quilts at a time. Part 1 is dedicated to the quilts for Bhree and her father, Steve. But before I get to the quilts, I’d like to name the family members who died – Dan, Bhree’s first husband, died when their teen-age daughters, Emma and Lizzie, were young. Five years later, Bhree’s mother, Renda, died, and later that same year, Bhree’s grandfather, Clyde, died.

The complexity of this project rested in the fact that I was given four people’s clothing – Bhree’s still-living grandmother wanted some of her clothes included as well – but not every quilt was made from the same groups of garments. Bhree’s quilt, for instance, needed to have Dan’s, Renda’s, Clyde’s, and Margaret’s clothes included. Steve’s, however, only needed Renda’s garments. And so the grand puzzle began.

Here is what my table looked like not long after the 9 labeled bags of clothing arrived at my studio:

Bhree requested that I use a lot of her mom’s red shirts in her quilt, since that was her favorite color. Luckily there were plenty of red shirts – I liked this one in particular for it’s mono-chrome patterning.

I was really excited when I pulled this dress of grandmother Margaret’s out of her bag.

Bhree and I discussed quilt design options for each of the 7 quilts. Since I had a fixed amount of fabric to work with, we decided to go with my Squares pattern for both her and Steve’s quilts. The smaller squares allow for more efficient garment use. With 567 squares per quilt, I needed to get the most out of each garment and to keep track of how many squares I had of each color.

There was also plenty of knitted/jersey fabrics that all had to be stabilized with a thin woven interfacing.

Once I had cut all of the squares, then I began the exciting part of laying out the design square by square.

Here are some squares of Margaret’s dress, a couple of Clyde’s ties, and two of Dan’s shirts.

Next came the meticulous sewing part. Meticulous because I had oriented each square individually to best relate to its neighbors.

And more sewing…

5 of the 7 quilts were throw-sized (55″ x 70″), so we knew I would have to add fabric for the border and backs. I found this wonderful, textured purple fabric for the border that really set off the red center.

Bhree wanted me to include part of this sweatshirt somewhere in the quilt, in addition to some of her mom’s handmade colorful vests. On the quilt back, I framed the sweatshirt cutout with a section of the red vest.

Here is the finished quilt, which I entitled, Renda’s Red Nova.

Steve’s quilt came next. It was very important to Bhree and Steve that Renda’s silk Eileen Fisher jacket be a prominent part of his quilt. Renda was a musician and conductor, and this jacket was the one she often wore when leading the community band in Homer, which included Steve on tuba.