Reece's Quilt

This is the last of four quilts I have been working on for the last few months.  Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Reece is 12 years old and the eldest of the four kids.

She loved the buffalo plaid shirt her dad wore so her mom put that one aside especially for her quilt. We paired it up with the black and grey shirts. 

Reece has always had a fascination for Terry Fox and his battle with cancer. Kevin received this t-shirt for participating in the Terry Fox walk one year and he proudly wore it. Of course we had to include it in her quilt as well!

Ralph Lauren Polo shirts were one of his favourite brands of shirts so I included some embroidery from those shirts as well. 

Nancy and I went to the local quilt shop to purchase the border, binding and backing fabrics. While we there, we saw the maple leaf fabric and thought it would look great in this quilt too! There were a couple of other fabrics that caught our eye so we added those too.

One of  Kevin's favourite t-shirts

I decided to free-motion quilt this quilt with some "organic" wavy lines. I had to be able control the machine myself and go around the embroidery from the Ralph Lauren polo shirts because it was too thick to go under the foot of the machine.  I think the texture of the wavy lines lends itself beautifully to the quilt and adds to the cozy overall feel. It turned out just as I had hoped!

the quilt on the longarm

the back

This is Reece's label with the scriptures her mom picked out just for her.

Her father used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

I am a little sad that this project is over but so happy that I got to work on it with Nancy. She is such an amazing lady and had great vision for these quilts. I am so happy I was able to make her vision come to fruition and help her through the grieving process.  It's not over yet though... we have plans to make a special quilt for her now and I can't wait to get started!

If you missed the posts about the other three quilts...

A Quilt for Brinley-Blüe

Paxton's Quilt

A Super Hero Quilt for Maddox

I am linking up to Finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts as well as TGIFF over at Charly & Ben's Crafty Corner.

A Super Hero Quilt for Maddox

This is the third of four quilts I made in the last few months. Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Maddox's quilt has a Super Hero theme.

The inspiration for this quilt came from a picture of Maddox and his Dad taken one Halloween. Maddox is dressed up as Captain America and his Dad is dressed up as Superman. Kevin has his hands on his hips, just like Superman, and is looking straight ahead. Maddox is looking up at his dad with that look of admiration only a child could have for his Hero, his Dad.  Perfection.

The t-shirts were all worn by Kevin and the blue patches are from his shirts. The plaid ones are actually from some pyjama pants. We picked up the red fabrics from our local quilt shop as well as the border, binding and backing.

The Captain America T-shirt was a gift Maddox gave his Dad for his birthday and also the last t-shirt Kevin wore before he passed away.

Kevin was a fan of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts so I added a patch from one of those shirts.

patch from Ralph Lauren polo shirt

 I quilted the pattern Jessie's Swirls on the quilt to add some texture and movement to the geometric squares.

quilt on the longarm

For the back of the quilt I used a nice blue crosshatch fabric from Carolyn Friedlander, one of my favourites.

back of quilt

This is Maddox's label with the scriptures his mom picked out just for him.

His father used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

Stay tuned for the final quilt...

Paxton's Quilt

This is the second of four memory quilts I made in the last few months. Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Paxton is 6 years old and his quilt has a "Canadiana"/Americana All-Star Theme.

Nancy found this pattern on Pinterest and it really spoke to her because her husband, Kevin, was born in The United States.  The pattern was originally for a Queen size bed so I did some playing around with the measurements so that I could have something to work with and we would end up with a lap size quilt.

the completed quilt top

The blue parts of the quilt consist of Kevin's blue shirts, the beige parts include one of his shirts, a pair of his pants and some fabrics from my stash and from the fabric store to make it look scrappy. Nancy and I had fun picking out the red fabrics at our local quilt shop. We wanted to add a bit of Americana with the stripes and a bit of "Canadiana" with the maple leaves. It was the perfect time to buy all of those fabrics, it being the sesquicentennial, and all of those fabulous fabrics being in the store! We also bought the blue border and binding and a dark blue polka dot for the backing.

Kevin was from Atlanta so I added a strip from a shirt that had the word "Atlanta" on it, and he was a fan of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts so I added the tag from one of his shirts to a strip as well.

The inspiration quilt had one star in the centre of it and Nancy liked this idea. Since Paxton is only 6 years old, we wanted to make the quilt playful, so we went with it, and added stars here and there in different colours, some are fabrics from Kevin's shirts and some aren't. I even found that fun navy star fabric in my stash.

To keep with the theme I quilted a Stars and Loops pattern on the quilt.

the quilt, loaded on the longarm

The stars and loops really show up nicely on the back of the quilt with the lighter coloured thread.

the back 

 Here is Paxton's label, with the scriptures, picked especially for him by his mom.

His dad used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

the label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

2 more quilts to go...

A Quilt for Brinley-Blüe

I have been working on a project for the past little while and now that the quilts have been received, I am so happy that I can share them with you.

I have made four memory quilts for 4 children who lost their father last year. Their mother approached me last fall and we have worked together to make these wonderful keepsakes.

The quilts have so much meaning and detail that I decided they each deserve their own blog post so this will be the first of four posts.

Brinley-Blüe is 5 years old, and the youngest of the family.  Her favourite colour is purple.

When I first met with Blüe's mom Nancy, she had separated all of  Kevin's clothes into piles of different colours. This pile had a lot of striped shirts so we added a pair of grey shorts.

just the beginning...

Nancy wanted a different pattern for each quilt. She wanted each one to reflect the personality of the child it was going to.

the completed quilt top

I brought her to our local quilt shop and we had a great time picking out borders, backings and filler fabrics for each quilt.

For Brinley-Blüe's quilt, we added the lovely mauve for the border and I used it for some of the triangles as well.  I also added a grey polka dot and a grey and black print.

Blüe's dad loved to wear Ralph Lauren Polo shirts and Kenneth Cole shirts so I added the tags from the shirts to the patches on the quilt.

I wanted the quilt to have a feminine look to it so I quilted a pattern called Butterfly Vines on it. I love the texture the pattern added to the quilt, and the softness the curves added to the geometric shape of the triangles.

For the backing I used a nice grey polka dot. We liked it so much we decided to use it for the binding as well.

backing

Each quilt also got it's very own personalized label. The label includes the child's name as well as some scriptures, specially picked by Nancy.

Kevin used to sign e-mails and letters: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning. 

the label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together. Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

Stay tuned for the other 3 quilts...