This memory quilt is an upcycling project at its best!
So my mother in law gave me a box of fabrics a few years ago she had kept for years for a special occasion. They were dear to her and she had wanted to sew something from it one day. And now I had it and I was honored, excited and a bit scared actually. So I put the fabrics together in a quilt and it is telling a wonderful story.
My OHs family spent many summer holidays in Sweden – and holidays during other seasons, too when he was a child. They went there in 1979 for the first time and they came back every year! A woman who was their relative and which they adopted to be their aunt lived in a simple yet cute house in Tommarp / Oesterlen.
She had a loom and made her own fabric.
She even made Christina, the oldest sister, weave and later in her life she became a professional weaver.
For me the first step for making this quilt was to collect all the fabrics that I wanted to go into the quilt. So I put these Swedish ones in one box with others from my stash. When the content of the box had grown I took a closer look.
Only the blue Swedish fabrics made it into this quilt. I am keeping the ones in other colours like red and brown for some other project.
And because the colors rose, pink and magenta go nicely with this royal and bright blue these became the contrasting fabrics. I took these from my stash – as follows:
Pieces of fabric from
– an older blouse one of my sisters gave to me to wear (light blue with millefiori)
– Stefans shirt (dark blue with white dots)
– one dress of my girls (pink with tiny flowers)
– one blouse of my girls (denim blue with rose flowers)
– a piece of blue Kaffe Fasset fabric from Andrea (Sewfullofdreams) – which was once the backing fabric of a quilt she had quilted in very, like very dense FMQ quilting and I volunteered to rip the sandwich apart for her because I really want her to use or finish the quilt because I like the top!
– a lovely Liberty fabric which I ordered London (pink)
And so London comes into play.
The receiver of this quilt, Eva, spent one year in London as au-pair. Back in 2016. So I wanted to pay it credit and weave this in the quilt, too. She had actually been to Regent street back than (envy-envy!!)
The flower stems are made of Liberty fabric too. The bias tape was appliquéd on by hand. Also made by hand were the Suffolk puffs, the English paper pieced hexie flowers and the appliquéd flowers.
The spiral flowers were designed by Sarah Fielke (www.sarahfielke.com) and I made some for my „A little Wilderness Quilt“ and so loved making them! I also wanted to see them made in blue and rose and pink and, as you can see, they look fabulous in this color combination! Thanks Sarah for coming up with these fab dizzy flowers!
While I was finishing the quilt the other week I listened to Karen Browns interview with Pearl Ann Gooding. Thanks for this interview ladies! I loved it. A big door opened for me! I found out one very important reason why I make quilts!
I also read Thomas Knauers book „Why we quilt“ the month it came to the market and it resonated with me a lot! I recommend this book to every modern quilter! He put so much in words which I only felt and had not put into actual words in my head. Go ahead and read it, if you are a quilter or if you want to understand the quilter in your life better.
But just like Pearl Ann Gooding one thing I really want to do is to conserve fabrics and the memories which are linked to them. Or I want to keep the memories alive and put them on display by making a project with fabrics from a certain time and place. I like to have them around on my bed, on my couch or on the walls, in my car, in the garden and actually just everywhere.
Also one thing which I love about sewing and quilting is that once you make a mistake you can rip the fabric apart with a seam ripper, or you adjust the seam, or you remake a certain part in a project… but this will be another blog post.
Also am I the only one who loves that decorating the house, putting quilts and cushions everywhere is on vogue again? It is called cocooning and posts about it can be found everywhere on Pinterest. Ha! So I am a hipster I guess 😀
CU 🙂
Caroline
OH, and I also made a flange binding for this one which is just darling and the perfect frame!! Love it so much! And the backing is a lovely Kaffe Fassett fabric in blue with daisies and other lovely bed flowers.
