Nancy's Quilt

 You may remember the memory quilts I made last year for the four children who lost their father to cancer. Well today I would like to share with you the quilt I made for their mother Nancy.

 

When I met with Nancy the first time, she had all of Kevin's clothes laid out in piles, separated by colour. When we picked the clothes for the kid's quilts, everything just came together perfectly. Nancy didn't know what she wanted for her quilt back then but by the time we came to work on her quilt, she was thinking she wanted a tree. And the funny thing was that the clothes that were left, were all in the perfect colour palette to make this beautiful tree.

I started by drawing out the tree and the mounds of grass. They are made from his pants and shirts.

Then I traced the leaves from some paper leaves Nancy had. 

Nancy gave me a list of scriptures that have special meaning to her and Kevin and I embroidered them on the some of the leaves. All of the leaves that don't have embroidery on them are from Kevin's clothes.

I appliqued everything down using matching threads. I used a zig zag stitch for the tree trunk and the mounds of grass, and I used a buttonhole stitch for the leaves.

The heart on the tree is also one of his shirts. I embroidered a K and an N on it before appliqueing it down with a satin stitch.

 The border is more of Kevin's clothing. The patch that says lucky you/lucky me is from his favorite pair of jeans, and the piece with the big clovers is the inside of the pocket from that same pair of jeans. 

The embroidered patches are from his Ralph Lauren polo shirts.

The quilt was custom quilted to add texture. There are leaves in the outer border and ribbon candy in the green inner border. Some landscape meandering and wavy lines were added to the mounds of grass and the bark was quilted on the tree trunk.

Details were added to the leaves and just a filler was quilted in the background. 

This is my favourite quilt I made in 2017. The meaning behind, the work I put into it... everything about it means so much.

I am so happy that Nancy came into my life. It is truly a blessing.