Memorial Quilts

Last year I was honored to be asked to create two quilts from the Hawaiian shirts of a friend's deceased husband.  My friend wanted me to make a quilt for her daughter and her sister-in-law so each would have something to remember him.

She brought over a large box that included 20 or so shirts as well as some Hawaiian yardage.

At first I thought I would just put together large chunks of shirt fabric but none of it played well together and my design sensibilities just wouldn't allow it.  A search of the internet gave me many ideas.  The quilt shown above is a pattern from Maple Island Quilts called BQ.  I am very happy with how the separation makes all the prints work together while also making it very interesting.  Gretchen was thrilled with it.  I like an interesting back so I used many of the larger shirt pieces on it as well as adding a bit from my stash.

 

The second quilt came about from some inspiration I gleaned while surfing the net.  I wanted something very graphic to showcase the shirt fabric.  I lucked out with the border fabric, I was able to fussy cut enough strips from some yardage she had in the box.  The center sashings comes from the same yardage as the outer borders.

I used the same soft yellow as background on both quilts.  It seemed to set off the shirts better.

I didn't realize that Izzy had inserted herself in the photo until just now!!  Camera hog!




Here is the back which I also tried to make interesting (in a wonky sort of way).

I hope everyone is having a good week.  Try to remember

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains". 

                 --Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)