Memory Pillow: The Dog Who Loved to Eat

Not long after I became a quilter, I realized I had acquired a superpower: The ability to console the bereaved, in a tactile way. 

A few months ago, my friend Lynn lost her beautiful dog Kenya. She told me how sad it was to come home and see Kenya's empty spot on the bed. I knew I had to make a pillow for that spot. Here's what came out. 

It's not just the finished pillow, or quilt, or whatever, that is consoling - it's the process, talking to the person about their loved one. When I asked Lynn what Kenya enjoyed, I was hoping she'd say something like a red ball, sticks, a teddy bear, something easy to piece or applique. Instead, Lynn said:
"Food." 
"Which food?"I asked.
"All food. And dog bones." 
Fortunately, I had a scrap of dog bone fabric:  

Plus, I own an infinite amount of human food fabric. I pieced together some food fabric strips, cut them them crosswise, and set them in the outer border. 

That border started out wider, but then I had to buy a smaller pillow form than expected (the store range was limited.) So I cut it back. That made the food border on front so thin you could hardly tell what the foods were. That's why I put more of the same food fabric on the back.

The central photo started out like this - Kenya with her younger brother Ziggy. I cropped it Photoshop. 

Then I printed the cropped photo onto a sheet of EQ Printables Premium Cotton Satin. It's pricey but the color comes out well, and it's permanent (Plus, my printer uses Epson Durabrite ink, which is  also supposed to be permanent and waterproof.)  
The goal of this pillow was to make Lynn smile. Dogs whose favorite food is everything are funny. And I hope the grass fabric suggests she's rolling in the lush grass of heaven. 
For more memorial quilt and pillow projects, click on "memorial" in the word cloud on the right.

Memorial Quilt from Tee Shirts, Button-Down Shirts, and a Bedsheet (or two)

One of the many helpful things a quilter can do in this world is comfort mourners with a quilt made from their loved one's garments. Last year, after my friend Wendy lost her father, and was going through the agony of sorting his possessions. I told her I would be honored to make a quilt from his clothing, if she wanted one. Not everyone does, but Wendy liked the idea. Here's the quilt I wound up making.

The first step for a quilt like this is to collect the clothing. Sometimes. if they ask, I help people go through their loved ones' closets; in this case, Wendy did it herself. She brought me a relatively small number of items, about 20 shirts, mostly button down and tees. There was a pair of jeans, some neckties, and a couple of bed sheets.

Back in my work room, before I start cutting or arranging, I light a candle, say a prayer, and have a chat with the deceased.

My next steps are to rough cut the garment fronts, lay them on the floor and figure out a preliminary layout. Then I press fusible interfacing to the back of the knit pieces to stabilize them. Fusing is a looooooong process.

The button-down shirts made from woven fabrics aren't stretchy, so they don't need interfacing. My first cut of those kinds of shirts looked something like this.

I strove to cut as far away from the buttons as possible. Knit shirts with buttons, on the other hand, do need interfacing. Here's how they look rough-cut with interfacing:

I usually arrange my tee shirt quilts in columns. I make it up as I go along, rearranging  for balance, cutting some shirts way down. The columns don't have to be the exact same width, but they do need to be the same length.

When necessary, I appliqué things to other things. Here a section of a Gold's Gym tee was appliquéd to the back of a button-down burgundy woven shirt. (And the crosshatched fabric to the left and below was a necktie.)

(Wendy's dad was a fitness buff, and that's one of the reasons Wendy became a stellar dancer and fitness professional. And because Wendy is such an outstanding trainer, I'm physically fit. So thank you Carl, your focus on health changed my life for the better!)

 Along the bottom of the quilt, and across the top, I created piano key stripes from shirt scraps and  neckties. I saved all the labels from the garments and appliquéd them on top of some of the keys. The back and the binding are made from a bedsheet (more on that later.)

Working on this quilt gave me a profound sense of calm. That had something to do with the many blues; but also I think to do with Wendy's dad.

One of the joys of a project like this is looking at outdated fashions. Remember teeny pockets? 

Carl had a special connection to the Philippines. 

To maintain the calm grid lines, I mostly stitched in the ditch, and also did straight vertical quilting lines about an inch to either side of the button plackets.

 There was one flannel shirt.

When the quilt was finished, I still had plenty of bedsheet material left. So I made Wendy a gigantic carry bag for the quilt.

 It bundles up into the pocket (my tutorial for making a magic pocket tote like this here.)

And there was still MORE bedsheet left, so what the heck, I tore it into strips, watched some tv, and crocheted this:

...A cheerful and fun basket for Wendy's family.

I loved making this project, and being helpful to Wendy. I never met Carl, but by the time I was finished, I felt like I knew him a little bit, and that he was okay with me cutting up his clothing!

New York Fabric Tee Shirt Quilt Back

Last week, I showed off the front of this tee shirt quilt for my daughter.

It was supposed to be her going-to-college quilt, but I finished it in December, just one semester late. The front has tees from her school years here in Southern California. When the top was finished, I didn't have any leftover tees for the back.

So the backing became a tribute to her present and immediate future in New York City, the location of her college. Creating the back was more of an exercise in shopping and stash-scouring than  art!

If you happen to love someone who has lived in New York City, and you want to make them a memory quilt, the good news is that there are plenty of fabrics that specifically depict The City - as opposed to virtually any other city. (There's a lot of Paris fabric out there, too, but I've never seen Milwaukee fabric or Phoenix fabric, or my hometown, Newton, Massachusetts fabric!)

While our family was touring colleges a year ago, I spent a blissful hour at The City Quilter, a legendary Manhattan quilt store. (The brick and mortar store is now closed, but they continue to sell their New York fabrics online.) That's where I bought the first five fabrics below. They call the first one "All the Buildings in New York," a slight exaggeration.

Running down the side of this fabric above is two-foot-long row of townhouses. At the City Quilter, they had turned it into a long, lean pillow. 

Adorable details: 

The buildings are about 3" high. 

I also bought a fat quarter of black-background NY subway map fabric....

...And  a FQ of the yellow cab fabric above. I had another yard of their white background subway fabric in my stash, that I'd bought from their website years before: 

It's highly simplified, so I hope my daughter doesn't try to use it to get somewhere. At the shop, I also bought a FQ of this "NYC Subway Tiles" fabric: 

And a FQ of my absolute favorite, this pigeon fabric:

Along with those, I searched my stash. My DD loves visiting coffee shops. These two black-and-white coffee fabrics below reeked of  New York caffeine:

My daughter's an enthusiastic thrift shopper, with great taste in vintage clothing, so I used this: 

I had a couple more New Yorkish fabrics, including this beautiful skyscraper fabric: 

And this grim "What was I thinking when I bought it a million years ago?" fabric: 

Can you detect the Statue of Liberty in the middle of this urban dystopia?

The last thing I did for this quilt was assign my daughter to go to her college store and buy the least expensive school tee shirt she could find, in any size. She brought it home for winter break, and I cut out the logo and stitched it on top of some red brick-themed fabric that I used in desperation when I'd run out of NYC fabrics. 

So how did she like her quilt? When she unwrapped it, and saw both sides, her first reaction was this: "It's the story of my life!" Mission accomplished! 

If you're interested in buying New York City fabrics from the City Quilter (no financial affiliation!) find their selection starting on two different pages, here and here. If you're not a stitcher, you can buy fun finished garments made from NY fabric, here.

To read part 1, about how to make a tee shirt quilt with tee shirt batting, find it here.  

Extraordinary Holocaust memorial quilt project

So moving. So important. Children of Holocaust survivors make extraordinary memorial quilts based on their parents' memories. 
http://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-memories-stitched-together-one-panel-at-a-time/.
The series of four quilts is now being shown in London's Jewish museum. 

Placing Paper in an Art Quilt

I think I've mentioned here before that many of my friends bring me orphan fabrics, which is exactly like bringing chocolate. When I look at it, I can't even remember a reason to say no.

But this particular delivery was one of the oddest. A dear friend had a mother in her late 90s. She'd been wearing the same heavy wool coat since at least the 1950s. Eventually, the coat's brown satin lining wore out, and my friend had a tailor install a new lining. The tailor gave him back the old lining. And my friend brought it to me.

At first, I thought, "This shredded shmata is the last thing I need in my house." I was finally going to turn away an orphan!

But then I looked at it some more. It was so soft and shiny. It had fascinating frayed areas. And then I found  the patch. It was beige, round, oval patch. It had been ineptly stitched on to the brown satin, using....

...is that ... could it be...forest green thread? Doubled?

Yes, I said, I will take it in.

My friend's mom died not long after that. So I constructed a quilt about mortality. And maybe because I'm lazy, and maybe because this quilt was built around a tangible relic of a mostly 20th century life, I decided to incorporate authentic 20th century paper, rather than photo-transfering paper images onto fabric.

I dove into my paper stash (not quite as deep as my fabric stash), and came up with classical sheet music book from the early 1900s, a paper printout of a statue (from a copyright-free Dover Book), and a circle of paper that I'd experimentally crumbled and painted with silver-blue acrylic paint.

In general, it's a good idea to strengthen paper before you add it to a quilt. My paper-strengthening secret is Golden Gel medium (regular). I cut out the statue, used the gel to adhere it to the blue circle, and glued that to the sheet music. Then I slathered that paper construction, front and back with several more layers of the gel medium, letting it dry in between applications.

Along with adhesion and strength, the medium gives paper a satisfying leathery feeling. The more layers the better. (Of course, no matter how much you strengthen it, it will never go through the wash.)

I did not dare machine-sew the sheet music to the black felt background; the stitching holes would almost certainly have ripped through. I hand-stitched it on with brown cross stitches.

That's an authentic worn spot in the coat lining on the lower right. 

 There was one tear during construction - you can see it in the photo above, between the last two vertical cross stitches. Fortunately, it fits into the theme. In hindsight, if that sheet music had been precious, transferring it to fabric first would have been a much better idea. (As it was, it came from a thick book of sheet music.)

I also did some long running stitches (with white thread), and french knots in the brown satin areas. I machine quilted a paisley design on the far right and lower left.

 This two-tone brown fabric, on the lower left of the piece, came from an upholstery sample book.  

Technically, this is not a quilt - the elements are stitched onto one large piece of black felt. So there are only two layers. Eventually, I'll frame it. For now, it's just tacked to the wall, and has held up quite well over several years.

There are many artists who combine paper and fabric, using lots of different approaches. Beryl Taylor has durable and inexpensive way to turn paper into strong fabric and incorporate it into art quilts, using watered down white glue.There's a wonderful, free article that you can download describing her process and showing her beautiful work, at http://www.clothpaperscissors.com/media/p/323/showcontent.aspx.

I hope this will inspire you to experiment with paper in your art quilts. And if you've already done it, I'd love to hear about what works for you!

Huggable Pet Memory Pillow

There are very few things sadder than losing a  pet. We lost our sweet, wacky  papillon Wuli two years ago, at age 17, and it still hurts. But one of the best things about being a quilter is the power to console. Once the bereaved has a little distance, a memory quilt - or, simpler, pillow - is one of the nicest things you can do for them - maybe. This is not a good surprise gift. Some people don't want vivid reminders strewn about the house. Ask before you start stitching.

Here's the memory pillow I made in honor of a dear friend's beloved shih-tzu, Jenniphur (yes, that's how she spelled it), who lived a  long, happy life despite numerous health challenges. I wanted to make it a celebration, so I used upbeat conversation/novelty fabrics: dog fabrics (including one that looked a lot like my dog, at the 11 o'clock position); hearts, butterflies, angels, a  fire hydrant, and, of course, Elvis (at the 3:15 position: "Ain't nuthin but a hound dog...")

Each fabric 'petal' was cut out using a Dresden Plate template. Dresden Plate quilts had their heyday in the early 20th century; learn about their past here. The 'modern' quilt movement has updated the motif in a big way (Pun intended: modern quilters like to make traditional blocks MUCH bigger, in contemporary fabrics. For example, check out this tutorial.) The American Quilters Society published a whole book of eye-popping contemporary Dresden-inspired quilts. ('Search inside' for the eye-candy.)

For my memory pillow, I used a purchased acrylic Dresden template; it's no longer being made by that particular manufacturer, but now there are others. Inquire at your local quilt shop; or google 'dresden plate templates'.. There are also free templates on the web (http://www.patternsfromhistory.com/colonial_revival/dresden-pattern.htm; click on "Dresden Plate PDF" at midpage), but you'll probably want to transfer them onto cardboard in order to make a stiff surface for tracing lots of petals.

 For the central circle, I printed a photograph of Jenniphur onto treated inkjet fabric sheets (my current favorite is 'EQ Printables Premium Cotton Satin - no financial affiliation!). I backed the photograph with a fusible web, then cut out the doggie, and set her on a batiked grassy pattern.  I zig-zagged the dog edges to the background using gold metallic thread, and zig-zagged over the grass with a variegated green thread. The petals are also outline-quilted with gold thread.

Finally, I couched trim around the central circle, and around the edges of the larger circle.
My friend loves it. She's got terrific manners, but says it's the only present she's ever recieved that she couldn't write a thank-you note for, because she became overwhelmed. (She thanks me in person, all the time). And it made me very happy to be helpful to her.
What memorial items have you made?