This is Lily. Or as those who loved her often called her, Miss Lily. As you can see the much loved Lily had poise, warmth, whimsy and accessories. Did she have accessories!
That’s where I came in. I happened to be talking to some cousins whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, and as conversations wander, my quilting came up as did my bizarre love of bandanas; the perfect travel companion…101 uses when traveling, but here I digress. From aside, Miss Lily’s family member of the female persuasion spoke up. Would I quilt something from Lily’s bandanas for M, C and P? She said I had no timeline and no conditions on design. Having only met Lily once myself, and on the run, I was not aware of her immense wardrobe. I couldn’t imagine sufficient material with which to work. Well, I was wrong.
As this was to be a surprise for the family, a large plastic bag full of bandanas was secretly delivered to me. Clearly, three lap quilts were possible. Now, the dilemna was twofold. These bandanas ran the gamut of color, pattern and mood. I set them all out and studied them. There was nothing to unite them. I feared the quilts would look cartoonish, but without the humor. What would unify them? The Amish have a wonderful way of combining bright colors with black to make strong, stunning quilts. I think this worked well with these quilts, unifying the fabrics.
The bandanas also were worn to varying degrees. Hindsight tells me that I probably should have used a stabilizer for some, but time will tell. How do you address a variation in wear? I need to play with this problem a bit. This project was so much fun with the fabric dictating the design. I usually start with the design and then move to the fabric choice, so perhaps now I’ll vary my approach more. Here is one of the quilts.
So here’s a new category of quilts: Memory Quilts!
Quiltify 
Beautiful! How long did it take to make this one? I’ve made a couple of memory quilts but those were for people, not a dog!
Sue, It’s hard to tell because my daughter was married during that time so preparations required time away. The quilt tops went together very quickly, once I decided what I was going to do and cut the pieces. I’d say most of all of them were sewn into squares in a full day, because I could mass sew, as I call it, without cutting threads very often. Then a few hours to put them together into three tops. There were certain preferences I had to keep in mind; i.e., the Broncos versus Patriots fan and so forth. To quilt a lap quilt on my Bernina, stippling, it takes six to eight hours, I think. Jan