Paula's Quilt

I had in mind for some time that my cyber friend, Paula, needed a quilt. My original thought was to make one for her myself. Then I began to think of a number of other quilters who are also friends of Paula, so had the idea to include them in the creation of this quilt gifted to her over the Thanksgiving weekend.

I had drawn up two different quilt design layouts that were voted on. Once this decision was made, each participant chose a section of the quilt to create. As for the colors and design, each artist was on her own to create whatever is meaningful between herself and Paula. The intent was to give Paula a tangible symbol of our caring about and for her ... to literally give her warmth and comfort.

Here are the individual pieces (and their makers) that comprise the quilt ...

Lisa Call (16"x 20")

Karen Christensen (16" x 16")

 Lynne Croswell (20"x 16")

 Gail Baar  (16" x 10")

 Kim Hambric (28" 10")

Colleen Kole (12" x 44")

Cynthia Wenslow (each 24" x 12")

This is one of the five sections made by me. My intent was for those segments to tie all our creations together. Take note that among my scraps are photos of Paula's art that I printed on fabric. I had fun!

Nellie Durand (16" x 8")

If Paula's other quilting friends had not joined me in this effort, the whole quilt would've been made from scraps like this. That would've been okay. However, it's a much better and more interesting, as well as meaningful quilt composed with all of our pieces.

Here's the back of the quilt ...

The backing fabric for each of the sections was an individual choice, too. I sent everyone a piece of wool bat for their section so each artist could do the quilting on her piece of the quilt. Wool batting is my favorite choice for functional quilts. The ones that I've made with it are my favorite.  They are light-weight, fold up small, and somehow are "just right" no matter the season ... not too warm on a summer's night and warm enough when it's cold.

I constructed the quilt by connecting each our pieces with "butted seams" (placing the raw edges of two sections next to each other and joining one to the other with a wide zig-zag stitch on the machine). Those  zig-zag stitched seams are covered with "sashing tubes" on both sides of the quilt.  The narrow 1/2" flattened tube of fabric (seam pressed open on the under side) was machine appliqued on the back side to cover the zig-zag stitched seam. Then another sashing tube was hand stitched over the joins on the front side.

The irregular and segmented design of this quilt is an ideal format for multiple creative friends to make a perfect quilt for a spunky artist.