I bought the pattern for this quilt at the Grand Opening of Deb’s fabric shop – probably two years ago! She was selling the pattern (with fabric) as a kit but I didn’t like any of the colours so I was able to pick my own fabrics. I made the quilt a bit larger than was called for by adding extra borders.

For a long time this was to be my Sashiko quilt because I wanted to quilt it using sashiko patterns meant for machine quilting. When I got down to the quilting though the patterns were just too small to use within the blocks so I had to change plans.

I need to remind myself that quilting on a heavily patterned fabric doesn’t show. I spent almost three days mapping out lines, stitching them and then tying in the ends only to realize that it really doesn’t show unless you are looking at it close up. I was smarter for the rest of the quilting and just did a meander.

I didn’t think the border fabric worked well with the backing fabric so I used a two colour binding.

The Guild Challenge (2016-2017)

From a list of 35 specific song titles we were to make a quilted wall-hanging based on one of them. The musical note fabric was included and had to be easily recognized on the front of the quilt.

“The Sound Of Silence”

Hello darkness, my old friend (Black Border)

I’ve come to talk with you again (Words)

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light (Whirls)

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share (Challenge fabric)

No one dare

Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools” said I, “You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows (Pink Ribbon)

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you”

But my words like silent raindrops fell (Raindrops)

And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning (Warning Sign)

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said “The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sounds of silence”

I don’t know if this is a gift for Diane or for Brian – either way they were both in my thoughts as I worked my way through this project. I would have liked to have had this done for Diane’s birthday but it just didn’t happen. The next probable date, although I missed this one too, was the anniversary of her death. I prefer to celebrate a birth rather than a death so this one got finished in its own time.

The pattern looked like it should be simple but I found it to be quite a challenge. The pattern pieces were spread over three pages so I had to do a lot of cutting and taping to get a continuous pattern for almost all the pieces. The directions for quilting were minimal and even then I didn’t follow them exactly.

The pattern is listed as an “Art Quilt” so I should have known better right from the start!

I finished this quilt in early February, 2017 – just in the for the Quilt Show.

I did a few small English paper-pieced projects and found I really liked the technique. I saw a pattern online that requires thousands of hexagons so I thought this quilt would be a good test of whether or not I still liked the technique. I do!

I had quite a bit of my favourite fabrics left from my Hubble quilt and I decided to use that for the blossoms. Just as the fabric line was taken off the market I was able to get some additional printed fabric for the borders. Pat and I took a long time to decide on the placement of the blossoms on each block. There were a lot of switches made during the process and we used black and white photos a lot.

The blossoms were hand stitched together and I used my machine (blanket stitch) to applique them to the background. Pat suggested off- setting the blocks with sashing. I quilted each blossom using a sunflower motif (44 of them) and I used a free-motion meander to fill in the background of each block.

I used a leaf motif (93 of them) in the sashing and inner border, but for the outer border I used a spiral motif (44 sets). After picking out a few of those spiral motifs on one side (because I caught the back of the quilt in the border) I reached a point where I couldn’t face another spiral so I added the word “Blossoms” into the border.

I learned how to use crayons on fabric at a demo night at the Guild. I used one of my favourites from that demo as a label for this project.

I gave this quilt to Elizabeth for her birthday!