This quilt started life as a foundation paper piecing QAL with hosted and designed by Becky. I ended up going for a bed sized quilt and it took me over a year to finished. Around the same time, we had a lot of bereavement in the family and I decided to use this quilt to give to a cousin Kathleen in memory of one of our mutual Aunts who Kathleen was very close to.
Becky lives in the US, Kathleen and myself in the UK, but I knew it would go to Kathleen's cottage in Ireland so green, white and gold seemed a good colour choice.
All the fabrics on the top came from stash and I'm sure I broke all the rules; there are solids, batiks and prints of all descriptions in there. I organised my greens and yellows into three piles, light medium and dark and used about 7 or 8 fabrics in each pile. I think I counted 51 or 52 fabrics in total.
To make it specific to my Aunty Martha, I used a sheet from her home I found when I cleared it out.
I pieced it, then quilted in four sections using Aurifil variegated thread in yellow and green. I spent months deciding on how I would quilt it and practised different things. I managed to put the four quilted pieces together in such a way that you can't tell it was quilted separated. Its a lot easier to manage small pieces on a domestic sewing machine.
Working on the quilting in particular was quite emotional, I thought of Martha a lot but in a good way. A lot of tears were shed over it but sometimes tears are healing, it was certainly the case for me.
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Memories of Martha
Finished quilt measures : 60″x72″
Special techniques used : foundation paper pieced.
Best Category : Bed Quilt, Home Machine Quilted
