Late last spring, my friend Barb had to have some surgery, and she told me that she would be laid up for quite a while afterwards. It's hard to support a friend during something like that when you live a day's drive away from them. You know what I mean, don't you? You want to make them soup, and maybe run their vacuum for them, bring them flowers and a card, or just sit with them to keep them company as they recover.
Well, after a lot of thought, I decided to make a quilt for her to use as she lay on her bed or the couch recovering. At least I would be there in spirit with her, trying to give her some comfort and aid. Barb loves the color lavender a lot(she even has a lavender bedroom), and I decided to add heather, cornflower blue and all shades of light purple to her quilt. So, now, here's the quilt I made for her.
The design of the quilt began with a pattern from Heather French (can you believe it? More heather??? for my purple quilt?) The pattern is called "French Roses" and uses soft edge applique as the technique for making the roses. You can get the pattern for the rose blocks at 1-702-236-8666 or email her @ french_roses06@yahoo.com.
Each block has a multi-layered rose and a couple of leaves. The whole quilt is very free form as the roses are 3-4 layers of fabric, with raw edges so that when you wash the quilt the edges ravel and fray and get really "rustic" looking. Sorry the photo above turned out a little blurry. Looks like I need to polish my picture taking skills.
For the border, I used a thread that is variegated green and put my trusty Sashiko machine to work. It stitches out like hand quilting in a fraction of the time it would take to do this by hand.
Pretty cool, huh? Don't get me wrong, I love doing my hand quilting, but sometimes when doing free form stitching, it helps to just guide my Sashiko across the fabric and it gives me the freedom to "draw" with the stitches in a more fluid manner than if I was hand stitching for hours and hours.
I had a panel of fabric with sayings about friends and used some of them as the centers of half the flowers. The remaining fabrics were cut into squares and used as the first border around the flower blocks. The white outside border created an embellished frame for the whole quilt using the Sashiko stitching and some yo-yo flowers I made up.
I randomly "plopped" the yo-yo flowers around the leaf and vine border, just to give the quilt some added dimension.
Then, I machine quilted around the roses and leaves, and inside the roses to secure the various layers of the flower to the quilt. The inside border was quilted with simple undulating lines that I rotated from square to square.
Another blurry picture, but at least you can see the quilting and yo-yo flowers a little better here.
This quilt was a lot of fun for me to make and it was a true labor of love. And I was able to get it to Barb when her sister-in-law flew up to see her just before her surgery and she tucked the quilt in her luggage.
Oh, I almost forgot. I also made her a matching pillowcase and had the quilt "wrapped" in the pillowcase instead of wrapping paper. The attached note had instructions for Barb that she couldn't open her present until she got back home from the hospital. Barb said it was torture for her not to open her gift, but after she was safely back home from her hospital stay, she said she was glad she waited for her surprise. And I got the most lovely thank you note a few weeks later.
Giving her a quilt made with love and lots of thoughts of her was not a substitute for being there, but she said it was a close second.
Debbie
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