Last April I was commissioned to make seven quilts. Yes, you read that correctly, seven quilts. I won’t bore you with all the details of submitting designs and the outrageous quantity of Woven Fusible I used but I will say that I did enjoy the work.
Mrs. M had specific ideas about what she wanted. Turns out that is terribly helpful. She knew what she liked and there wasn’t any wishy-washy-ness. Once we settled on the pattern I got to work.
The top of each quilt is made almost entirely from her father’s clothing. The jet black Kona used for the borders, binding and backing is the only non-clothing material used in these quilt tops.
This is a photo of one of the smaller quilts. The quilt I made for Mrs. M’s mom was larger, close to 60×80, and many of the squares had the logos from his golf shirts – think country club. There were also a few fun shirt logos tossed in for fun, like Stoli Vodka! I included the logo from his favorite brand of ties, Countess Mara, too. Sadly, I didn’t think to snap a photo of the big quilt. sigh.
The large “M” in the center of the quilt was made from Dad’s favorite jacket, also made by Countess Mara. I machine appliqued it to the black square in the center. The black block was cut from tuxedo pants (or a jacket, depending on the quilt) and the surrounding triangles were made from dress shirts (tuxedo shirt for Mrs. M’s mom and dress shirts for the others).
I was well into the quilt making process when Mrs. M asked me to include tie logos in all the quilts. Unfortunately I had cut around the logos and thrown out the itty bitty pieces that were left. I called Countess Mara, explained my project and they were kind enough to send me some tie labels. I stitched one down on each quilt top.
Each of the granddaughters had a special patch sewn onto her quilt.
And the back of each quilt had special sayings, individually bordered and scattered across the back
The fabric used around the labels was cut from a purple and white striped shirt. I stitched the pieces together so each label has a cool design element. Mrs. M’s Dad went to Northwestern University and purple and white are the colors. Let it also be noted that the quilts were each named “Go Cats!” for the aforementioned university.
The quilts were Christmas presents.
I received an email from Mrs. M on Christmas Eve. She looked all over the City to find big, pretty, white boxes to wrap the quilts. She found them and tied a pretty purple bow on each package. The email had a photo of the quilts, boxed and ready to go. It simply said “Beautiful Boxes for Beautiful Quilts” and made me smile.
