Eva’s Quilt: a memory quilt made from family fabrics

A box of fabrics

A few years ago, my mother-in-law gave me a box of fabrics. She had kept them for years for a special occasion. They were dear to her, and she had always meant to sew something from them one day. And now I had them. I was honored, excited and a bit scared, actually. So I pieced the fabrics into a quilt, and it tells a wonderful story.

Summers in Sweden

My husband’s family spent many vacations in Sweden. They went there for the first time in 1979 and came back every year after that. A relative they had adopted as an aunt lived there in a simple, pretty house in Österlen. She had a loom and wove her own fabric. The oldest sister learned to weave from her and later became a weaver.

What went into the quilt

My first step was to collect all the fabrics I wanted to go into the quilt. I put the Swedish ones in a box together with others from my stash. When the box was full enough, I took a closer look. Only the blue Swedish fabrics made it into this quilt. I’m saving the red and brown ones for another project.

Because rose, pink and magenta go so nicely with this bright royal blue, they became the contrasting colors. I took these from my stash:

• an older blouse one of my sisters gave me, light blue with millefiori
• one of my husband’s shirts, dark blue with white dots
• one of my daughters’ dresses, pink with tiny flowers
• one of my daughters’ blouses, denim blue with roses
• a blue Kaffe Fassett fabric from my friend Andrea
• a pink Liberty fabric I ordered from London

Andrea’s fabric has a story of its own. It was once the backing of a quilt she had free-motion quilted very, very densely. I volunteered to rip the whole quilt sandwich apart, because I really wanted her to finish that top after all. I like that top a lot, you see.

A piece of London

Eva, who this quilt is for, spent a year in London as an au pair in 2016. I wanted to honor that and sew it into the quilt, too. She even went to Regent Street back then, and I was a tiny bit envious.

That is why the flower stems are made of Liberty fabric, too. I appliquéd the bias tape for them by hand. Also sewn by hand: the Suffolk puffs (little gathered circles of fabric, also called yo-yos), the English paper pieced hexie flowers and the appliquéd flowers.

The spiral flowers were designed by Sarah Fielke. I had already made some for my “A little Wilderness Quilt” and loved making them so much that I really wanted to see them in blue, rose and pink. And as you can see, they look fabulous in these colors. Thank you, Sarah, for these wonderfully dizzy flowers.

Why I make quilts

While I was finishing the quilt, I listened to Karen Brown’s interview with Pearl Ann Gooding. A big door opened for me: I found one very important reason why I make quilts. Thomas Knauer’s book “Why We Quilt” also moved me deeply. He put so much into words that I had only felt until then.

Just like Pearl Ann Gooding, I want one thing above all: to preserve fabrics and the memories linked to them.

I want to keep memories alive and put them on display by making something from fabrics of a certain time and place. And I like to have these quilts around me: on the bed, on the couch, on the walls, in the car, in the garden, really just about everywhere.

Something else I love about sewing and quilting: when I make a mistake, I simply rip out the seam with my seam ripper, adjust it, or sew that part again.

The frame

Finally, the quilt got a flange binding, a narrow second edge that works like a picture frame. I love it. The backing is a blue Kaffe Fassett fabric with daisies and other garden flowers.