The Beginning of the Memory Quilt

Last summer while I was recuperating from hand surgery, I did some major sleeping and dreaming. Planning quilts is one way of visualization that helps me relax. As I lay in bed under my cozy quilt thinking how my quilt was comforting me, I drifted off to la la land. In my dream, mixed with some pain killers.......I had an inspiration to make a memory quilt for my friends Rob and Jessica. You see, Rob has been fighting a battle with lung cancer for a few years and now......sadly, the cancer is winning. So I made my decision that when my hand was healed enough to sew again, this Memory Quilt was my next project. After deciding what pattern I would use and how I was going to add in the photo blocks I had to ask questions. "What are your favorite colors?" Orange she said, "our whole family loves orange". Ok, that is a happy color - now what goes with orange? I was sitting in my quilt block class and saw bolts of fabric behind my instructor. Orange immediately caught my eye- I knew it was a sign. That's it! That is the fabric for the memory quilt. Crazy for Dots and Stripes fabric by RJR. I chose the "Turning Twenty" pattern that I purchased several years ago. It all came together really fast. I bought all the orange in the fabric line at one quilt shop and my co-worker Ann bought the blue fabric in the same line, Crazy for Dots and Stripes at another quilt shop. Ann had been asking me to teach her how to quilt so she was happy to join in on purchasing the fabric. From there we bought a few other complimentary polka dot fabrics to blend in with the white backing for the photo blocks.



How many rows of blocks for this lap quilt? I went with 16 blocks- 4 in each row.

After the photo blocks were completed, printed and transferred to the white fabric - the blocks were moved around to a perfect place- dots, stripes, lights and dark fabrics. I didn't want it to be random. I spent hours moving the fabric around the floor and then I would sit back and stare. This has to be perfect....well near perfect anyway!