Recently I was contacted by someone who had gotten my details from a mutual friend. She had lost her husband this year and her daughters had lost their dad. She asked me if I would make a special quilt for each of her daughters as it was their first Christmas without their dad, and she wanted an extra special and sentimental gift for them.
We ‘spoke’ over email for a few hours, with me asking her what she was looking for, she had no idea and was happy to leave everything to me. So, I asked her to tell me a little bit about her girls and what they were like, their favourite colours, any hobbies, ages etc, after a while I found out that the younger daughter was a tomboy who liked cats and the colour blue and the older daughter was at university studying English Literature, she loved reading and used to enjoy going to museums with her dad.
Mum did not want me to use the dads clothing, and after I asked her, she did send me some lovely photos to use. I had a think and looked through some pictures of quilts until I found something that I thought could work and the girls might like, I sent the pictures to the mum and showed her some fabrics that I had, to see if she liked them, she loved the ideas that I had presented to her, so I got to work.
First, I had the photos printed onto fabric.
I started with the younger daughters’ quilt. I had a catitude panel which I cut up, I added further cat print fabrics from the same range and some solid white and I designed a lovely quilt top that I was happy with.
I framed the photo and created a block which coordinated well with the quilt top and I pieced it into the backing of the quilt. The quilt backing and binding were a light blue colour which coordinated well with the printed fabrics. I used variegated thread to lightly quilt around the cats in the panel pieces taking care not to quilt over the photograph.
With the first quilt finished I turned to the second quilt, for the elder daughter.
I had decided that I would make her a bookshelf quilt as a nod to her English Literature study and her love of books. I did some research to see which books may be read when studying at degree level and I used my embroidery machine to embroider the names onto different coloured fabric, changing the fonts, sizes and thread colours as I did them, so that I would have a good variety. I also added some current popular book titles. I added some books that were guides to museums to encompass her much loved trips to the museum with her dad. In total I had 62 embroidered book names. I sewed up blocks of 8-10 books, using blank strips too and begun laying these out in a design that I was happy with.
Next, I framed the two photos that I had of the daughter and her dad and placed them on the shelves.
The most challenging part for me was making the blocks with leaning books, as I struggled to get the angle right on the bottom of the leaning books, but eventually I managed it.
I sewed the book blocks into rows and finally completed the quilt top.
I do not know the girls that these quilts are for or their mum, but when I was ‘speaking’ to the mum my heart really went out to them all and I just wanted to make the very best quilts that I could for them. I wanted to design something that suited their individual personalities and that they would love, the sentimental bits are the photos of them with their dad, so whenever they use the quilts, they would have him near. I am not usually very sentimental but these quilts meant a lot to me and I’m very proud of them. I hope come Christmas morning that they will love these presents from their mum as much as I do.
How lovely!
Thank you Maggie x