Jennae's Friendship Quilt
I am a lucky lady to have a lovely group of quilting friends in my life. Nothing beats having the support and camaraderie of friends that care for one another. One of the things I love about our group is that when someone is having a particularly rough time, we all work together to make a quilt for them. You can see the first such quilt here.
This time it was Jennae's turn. Her tastes run more modern, so we modified Up, Up, and Away by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts. The original pattern can be found in Sunday Morning Quilts, coauthored by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. For our version, we used larger pieces, and we added solid setting triangles around the outside.
This was the perfect quilt for a group project. Emily snuck us each a baggie of solid squares already cut to size at a quilt guild meeting. Once we got home, we each raided our stashes for bright batiks to sew the wonky triangles.
I love that the quilt includes a little bit of each of us in the form of our scraps. Our personalities come out in our fabric choices, as well as how we sewed them. Some of us sewed all of the triangles as straight as we could, some of us sewed at a little bit of an angle, and Julie made hers as wonky as possible. The sizes, angles, and colors are all so different, yet they go together so well, just like our diverse personalities fit together in our friendship.
One of the reasons this was such a perfect group quilt was that all of the blocks were guaranteed to be the same size. When we got them all back, they went together like a dream. Emily came over to press while I sewed, and we were able to assemble the top in a day.
We didn't want to take too much time on the back, but we also didn't want it to be boring. We added a stripe of batik charms to break up the yardage and give it a pop of brightness. Even a tiny bit of piecing can make a huge difference on the back of a quilt.
I quilted it all over with a pantograph called Dizzy Izzy by Jessica Schick. It complements the modern feel of the quilt and provides great texture. This has quickly become one of my favorite designs for adding movement and texture without competing with the piecing design.
I've always maintained that the label is one of the most important parts of a quilt, but this time I have a confession to make. I forgot Emily's name! I can't believe I left her off. Thank goodness she has a good sense of humor! We're planning to get her name added at some point, but it hasn't happened yet. For now, the label reads:
Made with love for Jennae Liberty.
When life gets tough, we've got your back.
Made by Julie Eik, Linda Beck, Denise Stenzel, Barbara Beller, and Bobbi Bridgeman.
Bozeman, Montana
April, 2017
When we were ready to present the quilt, we arranged to meet at Starbucks for coffee before the quilt guild meeting. We should definitely do that more often! It was a great opportunity to spend some time together, and we surprised Jennae with her quilt while we were there.
I'm happy to say that Jennae loved the quilt. There's something special about making a quilt for another quilter. I'm glad that she loves it, and that she can wrap up in our friendship any time she needs a hug.