Today I finished binding my Pineapple quilt. This was one of our Loose Threads projects that we started back in the summer. If any of you outlive me, you will see it again, on my casket.
Last summer when my Aunt Dorothy, a noted quilter, died, we placed one of her beautiful quilts on her casket. It was absolutely breathtaking.
Why this particular quilt for me? Each block is a little package of memories. When I make a quilt, I put the scraps that are big enough to use for something else in a ziplock bag and throw them in a big plastic tub. When we were assigned this quilt, it was supposed to be "scrappy" meaning that it should be made of completely random fabric scraps. As usual, I didn't exactly follow the rules.
I went to my little bags of fabric and found that I could make blocks that looked little mini-quilts from the project they were a part of. One block contains reproduction Civil War fabric and a vintage scrap dating to around 1900 that was part of my vintage quilt restoration.
Blocks can be found that came from my granddaughters quilts, from a project my daughters and her friends did this summer for their friend who was battling breast cancer.
Some came from material used to make table runners that I gave for Christmas one year. The reds and blacks came from Jason and Janice's Ginger Jar quilt, and other came from Hayley and Olivia's quilts.
Many blocks are based on color and contain a little of all my scraps.
If the blocks didn't represent a quilt, they produced a memory. My friend Terry lets me accompany her on dog show trips, almost always conveniently located near quilt shops.
Some of the beautiful batiks came from a shops in Corinth, Miss., and Jackson, Tenn. The pink used in the cornerstones came from a unique fabric place in Franklin, Tenn., and much of it came from our own little shop in Senatobia—Cotton Treasures.
Thanks Chantay Rhone for the beautiful quilting in stunning melon-colored thread in the Van Gogh pattern. If you look closely you can almost see his distinctive swirly shapes of his famous Starry Night painting. Fellow quilter Genell Clayton pushed us out of comfort zones to do this pattern from Gyleen Fitzgerald's Trash to Treasure book.
So when my bluegrass friends sing, "I'll Fly Away" at my funeral (I hope it is a long way off!) I'll be wrapped in the memories.
Beautiful.
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