My last quilt, was created totally out of love for my brother Vernon Harris who is battling lung cancer. This quilt was designed, and stitches sewn and ripped open and redesigned during the many stages to the finished quilt. It has 200 plus fabrics, Western, animal, hunting, cowboy and embroidered horses which were done mostly by my buddy Vye on a Babylock Ellisimo. The fabrics came from the internet mostly, since western fabrics are hard to come by in VA. I now have three (24 qt) totes filled with western, horse, bandanna,and animal fabrics. Perhaps someday I will come to someone's western need or will sell on E BAY. Have to say, E BAY is a wonderful place to find themed fabrics. Some of the fabrics came from Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado too.
Everyone knows that traditional quilts are not my favorite type of quilting since I favor Art Quilts but this was a pure pleasure. I quilted it with a barbed wire looking stitch. Lots of friends (Jackie, Melissa, Vye, Eva) were involved in this quilt's creation, most important was the encouragement I received as I struggled with getting it just right. The final quilt structure was built on blocks and sets of 4 blocks with three sets in each row. Each block had at least 5 fabrics some 8. The back was created using a panel with Geranomo and 2 Navajo prints. Knowing I needed 10 yards for the backing I found 2 Navajo prints, one brown, and the other turquoise on E bay five yards each...great until I realized the turquoise print was the best fabric to use for the sashing for the top...quite a problem until Vye came in with three yards of the identical turquoise Navajo print....That was a YEAH day! The best reason for having stash is so you can help out your buddies. The next issue was that the quilt had enough white in the quilt to associate the quilt to lung cancer. White being the color for lung cancer, I wanted to balance the design with it. After a lot of crazy what ifs, I decided to make white stars as the corner stones which I think was genius. The next problem was how to create the stars, Vye to the rescue again, she played around with it and wallah...STARS! Afterward we did find out that the way we did them was not the traditional way but everything happens for a reason, our stars have longer irregular points and look great! Many thanks go out to my buddies for all their assistance and babysitting me as I struggled with this quilt. I wanted it to be perfect for my brother. And even if it is not perfect, my brother believes it is, which makes it all wonderful!
Everyone knows that traditional quilts are not my favorite type of quilting since I favor Art Quilts but this was a pure pleasure. I quilted it with a barbed wire looking stitch. Lots of friends (Jackie, Melissa, Vye, Eva) were involved in this quilt's creation, most important was the encouragement I received as I struggled with getting it just right. The final quilt structure was built on blocks and sets of 4 blocks with three sets in each row. Each block had at least 5 fabrics some 8. The back was created using a panel with Geranomo and 2 Navajo prints. Knowing I needed 10 yards for the backing I found 2 Navajo prints, one brown, and the other turquoise on E bay five yards each...great until I realized the turquoise print was the best fabric to use for the sashing for the top...quite a problem until Vye came in with three yards of the identical turquoise Navajo print....That was a YEAH day! The best reason for having stash is so you can help out your buddies. The next issue was that the quilt had enough white in the quilt to associate the quilt to lung cancer. White being the color for lung cancer, I wanted to balance the design with it. After a lot of crazy what ifs, I decided to make white stars as the corner stones which I think was genius. The next problem was how to create the stars, Vye to the rescue again, she played around with it and wallah...STARS! Afterward we did find out that the way we did them was not the traditional way but everything happens for a reason, our stars have longer irregular points and look great! Many thanks go out to my buddies for all their assistance and babysitting me as I struggled with this quilt. I wanted it to be perfect for my brother. And even if it is not perfect, my brother believes it is, which makes it all wonderful!
