Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am linking up with Amy's blog for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, so if you love quilting you can check out all the other quilts linked with her blog.

This quilt I made two years ago for our soldier son Lucas on his fortieth birthday.

It was meant to celebrate Lucas as well as serving as a memorial for his fraternal twin brother Matthew whom we lost in 2006, one week after their 38th. birthday.

Matthew lived in Hawaii, he was an Ironman and Triathlete, and we miss him every day. It isn't something I will ever "get over", but Matt had such joy in life that we try to honor that as we live with the grief.

Matt loved Hawaii and especially Maui where he and his wife lived. He thought he lived in the closest thing to earthly heaven in this tropical paradise, with his passion for the ocean and swimming.

So I designed this quilt using fabrics I had purchased in HI., appliqueing some beautiful tropical flowers and quilting hibiscus all over in between the photos.

I chose to use many of the twin's birthday pics from over the years, and at the bottom one of the last pics of Matthew and a recent one of Lucas.

I burned out on applique years ago, but I was grateful for all the practice I had when attaching these flowers.

I have made several memory quilts and designing the quilts to fit around the photos is always a challenge- it reminded me of when I wondered what earthly use all that math would ever be to me!

The photos have a narrow red piping and I made a piped binding to finish it off.

Out of all of my quilts this one will always be special.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Miri, Milk And Honey Quilts, just reminded me that the Blogger's Quilt Festival is online again and here's my choice.

I blogged about it already when I finally brought it to completion, my Stash New York Beauty.

Almost all the fabrics came from my stash, exceptions being the larger pieces in a couple of the border areas and the backing & binding, a beautiful Asian print.

Every block has a theme, African, Asian, musical, Monet, etc. and each block is quilted according to the fabric design, the quilting took several days on my A-1 longarm machine.

The blocks and the border are all paper pieced and the border was designed to reflect the identical fabrics from the adjoining blocks. I made bias binding to accommodate the curved edges on opposing corners.

It was so much fun to pick out the coordinating fabrics from my collection and then to watch as the blocks came together.

The process was a long one, the project began a few years back with a group of quilters in Montrose Colorado who invited me to join them as they learned the art of paper piecing meeting each Wednesday night through summer and fall to work on this project.

All the other quilters completed theirs within a year, every one quite different then the quilts were displayed at the Montrose Quilt Show that year. Perhaps I need to show mine this year to prove it is done, the finished quilt makes me very happy!