de Jong Dream House: memory quilts

Showing posts with label memory quilts. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Quilt #133 :: Thin Red Ironman Line

Merry Christmas from the de Jong Lake House, which is quickly becoming our new Dream House. It's not the house of which we lovingly and painstakingly designed each inch, but it is where my loves live, and they are the ones that have made my dreams of family come true.

But mixed with the wonder and joy of the holidays, I know that too many of my friends are also filled with sorrow as ones they love live on only in their memories. One family that has been particularly close to my heart over the last year is the Kreza family.

There is a special group of women I've written about before. We call each other The Moms and we met when we were all expecting our now 11-year old kiddos. I've made a few quilts for The Moms over the years.

Quilts made for The Moms, Piper's Maple Leaves, Imogen's Bakery Banner, "A Team" en Provence, Branch's Carpenter Star, Gioia's French Roses, Brooks' Auburn Herringbone

Most of the quilts were for new siblings to our birthday buddies, but where those were born of joy, this one was born of sorrow.

For the second time in a decade, one of The Moms has lost her love. For those of us who only knew Mike Kreza from the adoring words and adorable photos posted by our friend Shanna, he seemed like the perfect guy. Mike was devoted to his wife, an involved daddy to his three girls, and from all reports, was a generous friend. He also had a fantastic smile that light up his eyes. He was a fire fighter in California who put his life on the line every day he went to the station. And he was an Ironman athlete to boot. It was while he was training for the 2018 Arizona Ironman that a man driving under the influence hit him on his bike. He died two days later, on November 5, 2018.

Death is rarely fair, but it seems particularly cruel when it steals away too soon someone who adored his wife, lived for his kids, and chose the kind of career that is the epitome of selfless. His character and generosity is evident even now as his fire community, his Ironman community, and friends and strangers around the world have come along Shanna and the girls in a way most grieving families can't even fathom.

I've wanted to make a quilt for Shanna and her girls all year, but memory quilts are so hard to start. I think making a quilt like this makes a death feel so final and I just hate that our friend has to face this.

This is the first quilt I made start to finish at the Lake House. I had a few ideas but knew that I had to incorporate the logo that was made in Mike's honor.

I ordered fabric from Spoonflower with the logo on it. (I did get permission from Shanna first, though she didn't know what I wanted to use it for). The font ended up much bigger than I thought, so I had to cut out the individual logos and piece them together in a new design. I had envisioned an alternating brick pattern, but I really like how this turned out.

Being new to town, we don't know our local first responders yet. I brought the quilt over to our local station to request a photo in front of the station.

When I showed the dispatcher the quilt, she brought everyone at the station to admire it and hear about Mike's life. Then they offered to take a picture with it in front of one of their trucks. When I left, they gave me one of their patches to send to Mike's family with the quilt.

I ultimately decided on the fire flag design despite Mike not dying in the line of duty because he risked his life each day, and when someone choses to be a firefighter, his lifetime of sacrifices deserved to be honored.

Once I figured out how to make the quilt, I made the decision to use 44 different black tonal prints, one for each year of his life. After sorting through my stash, it took visits to six different quilt shops, plus Amazon to find everything I needed.

The red heart print has been in my stash for awhile, waiting for the right quilt. It was the first print I chose.

For the quilting, I veered from my standard spiral and used one of the hearts to echo. I put an "S" in the center of the heart, because Shanna was at the center of everything Mike did.

As you enjoy the company of your family on this Christmas, and all the holidays that follow, take a moment to think of first responder families, whose loved ones may be away on call or worse. Better yet, include in your tradition, a show of gratitude: take some goodies to the station, write a note of thanks, or if you are able, give a bit to help make the holidays a little easier on those missing their hero.

To see more photos of this quilt in progress, look for #thinredironmanline on Instagram. To see what I'm currently working on, please follow me at @dejongdreamhouse.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Quilt #35: Wedding-Turned-Memorial UP quilt

Last summer, I posted about the "UP"-themed wedding gifts I made for my friends, Bob and Erin, in honor of their "UP"-themed engagement and wedding.

Erin and I have been friends since my days in Michigan, where she and I grew closer after my brain injury. When I was dating, Erin would happen to stop by wherever my date and I met up to check up on me. In fact, on the first weekend Niels and I met, Erin joined us at an improv show. During the intermission, she leaned over and asked me what I thought of Niels, because if I didn't want him, she did! That was just the nudge I needed to get over my commitment fears!

Erin and I were alike in our high regard for marriage and high standard for the men we were hoping to marry. Two years ago, Erin met Bob and they quickly fell madly, almost ridiculously, in love.

At the time of their wedding, I had been been quilting for only four months, and had just finished my third simple quilt. I wanted to make them a quilt, but I also wanted to make sure I had a few more quilts under my belt before I made theirs. I gave them the gifts pictured above and promised them a quilt for their first anniversary.

Although I did manage to figure out how to make the quilt I had in mind for them by their first anniverary, when it was done I thought it was better suited for a girl, So with their permission, I gifted it to a sweet little girl who has being fostered by friends of mine, and promised them a quilt for their second anniversary.

As we talked about what kind of quilt I should make for them, they suggested an "UP" quilt. I was pretty intimidated by the prospect, and mulled it over for months. I started sketching some ideas and collecting fabric and slowly, the UP quilt was moving up in my to-do queue.

Tragically, Bob died of a heart attack on September 20.

My heart was broken for my friend and I was determined to finished their quilt.

Fortunately, I had been thinking about this quilt for more than a year so I had the template ready, fabrics collected, and had been learning to applique, I had found inspiration for the background in an eBay quilt, I have made several digital-type quilts, so the idea of making the balloons out of squares appealed to me.

I used two very similar blue fabric for the background, and five different whites for the clouds.

For the balloon squares, I used twelve different solid colors, plus thirty-one special balloons, many of which held special meaning to Bob and Erin. Bob had teased me, as a Minnesota Viking fan, that he wanted his quilt to have Chicago Bears fabric in it. He got his wish.

The background came together very quickly. I made nine patches out of the squares, taking some care with the balloon squares to makes sure the color placement was random, and then I stitched the whole background together.

I had wanted to the house to look more true to the the style of the house in the movie. This was by far the hardest part for me because I didn't have a pattern or template to go from, just a blown up image of the house that I had made by layering shapes in PowerPoint.

For the most part, I was still happy with my fabric choices after all these months.

I used the squares of my nine-patches as an estimate for how large my applique pieces needed to be. I started with the large background pieces. It looked good until I pinned the pieces to the quilt, so I systematically trimmed back all the pieces.

Not only did I have to see how the sizes worked together, but i also had to play with some of the fabric choices. The original dark green i picked was too green, so I had to swap it out for something lighter.

The dormers were tricky because I had to guess on the angles, and math was never my strong suit in school. Once I was happy with a shape, I re-cut it as a single piece. I was using raw edge applique so I wanted as many seamless joints as possible.

It took two full days, but I finally had everything the way I wanted it.

If anyone would like to try to replicate the house, these are the shapes I cut. Please note that these are the final tweaked sizes and may not look exactly like the in-progress photos.

Yellow (dormers, porch):

One triangle 9.5" wide at the base and 13" tall. The sides should measure 13.75" long.
One rectangle 13" x 2"
One triangle 4.75" wide at the base and 5" tall. Sides should measure 5.5" long.
One rectangle 4.75" x 1". (Note that I re-cut this piece and previous as one piece)
Two rectangles 11" x .75"
One rectangle 7" x .75"
Four rectangles 2.5" x .5"

Dark Blue (dormers and eaves):

One rectangle 10" wide at the base and 14.5" tall. The sides should measure 15.5" long.
One rectangle 5" wide at the base and 5.5" tall. The sides should measure 6" long.
One rectangle 15.5" x .5"
One rectangle 1" x .5"

Light Blue (siding):

One rectangle 13.5" x 3"

Pink (siding):

One rectangle 13.5" x 10"

Black (roof and windows):

One rectangle 26"" x 6.5". Mark a spot on the top of the rectangle that is 22" from the right side. Place one end of your ruler at the 22" mark and one end at the bottom left corner. Cut off the outer left piece.
Four rectangles 2" x 2.75"
Four rectangles 1.5" x 1.75"
Four rectangles 1" x 1.25"

White (window trim, door trim, ladder-like trim):

One rectangle 5.25" x 3.5"
Two rectangles 5" x 3.75"
Two rectangles 4" x 2.75"
Two rectangles 2.5" x 1.75"
For the ladder like trim, I bought a ladder shape from Silhouette and stretched to to 13.5"

Purple (porch and windows):

One rectangle 13.5" x 2"
Two rectangles 4.5" x 3.25"
Two rectangles 3.5" x 2.25"
Two rectangles 2.25" x 1.5

Dark Green (siding):

One square 12" x 12"

Light Green (siding):

Two rectangles 12" x 5.5"

Maroon (chimney):

One rectangle 5" x 1.75"
One rectangle 2" x 1"

Brown (door and steps):

One rectangle 5" x 3"
One rectangle 3" x 1"
One rectangle 4" x 1"

The next order of business was to clean up my cutting table, which looked like this!

One of the reasons I enjoy quilting is that I am always learning something new. I used Heat N Bond, which I love. However, because some parts of the house were four layers of applique thick, it made the quilt a little cardboardy in places. If I were to make another quilt like this, I would use basting spray to place the pieces and then immediately stitch to reinforce each piece. I think it would save time, and make for a more cuddly quilt.

Once all the pieces were prepped, it was time for the scary part: praying that I fused the pieces correctly so I didn't have to repair or replace the background quilt!

I started by layering the pieces that could later go on the quilt as one piece, like the windows on the dormers.

I enlarged the picture of the house so I could carefully place all of the foundational (bottom) pieces of the house.

Then I found matching thread colors to secure these pieces.

At this point, I'm only confident in raw edge applique, so that's what I did, using a 1/8" seam.

Once the first layer of applique was done, the rest went together pretty easily and I was breathing again!

The next thing I did was add a few notes to a few of the balloons. I learned a cool trick for using up scraps of my label fabric. I designed what I wanted each block to look like, and printed it. I then taped my scraps over the images and re-printed.

I ironed on the dates and phrase, "It's beautiful here," a goose-bumpy nod to a dream a friend had the day after Bob died.

I added a 2" border using the backing fabric, and then a 3" border using the lesser-used blue cloud fabric.

Finally, I added the balloon strings. I quilted them on only the top because the reverse side would have photos and I didn't want all those lines going through my friends' faces. Here is where I most appreciated my new Pfaff because I don't think my entry-model Singer would have done so well, especially because my first attempt with white thread wasn't dark enough and I had to do it again with dark thread. I used Viking purple. I think Bob would have gotten a kick out of that!

At this point, I was starting to believe I could finish the quilt before we left for the funeral! Because the quilt was now a memory quilt, I wanted to add some photos. I used Drintz Sew-On Printable Fabric. I learned my lesson from my Gramma's memory quilt and rinsed off the excess ink immediately after printing the photos.

The photos were printed at 8" x 10" but were actually a little smaller due to the way the fabric took to the water. It took me a little while to figure out what size I needed the sashing to be. I never realized quilting required so much math! (For the record, I need 3" strips of sashing in the middle and 5.5" sashing on the ends).

My son got a lot of free tech time at the end of the week as I worked feverishly to finish!

Making my quilt sandwich was a little challenging because I needed to line up the photos on the back with the blocks on the front. I taped chopsticks to the center image before securing it to my table.

I started quilting by stitching in the ditch around the photos on the back. Then I turned it over stitched in the ditch around the sky, clouds, and balloons, while avoiding the photo area on the back. I watched the movie, "UP" to spur me on.

I decided to work through the night rather than wake up early and risk not quite finishing. I had this polka dot fabric planned for another quilt, but it tied the colors together so well, I had to use it. Plus, the polka dots reminded me of balloons.

There may be something to this middle-of-the-night work. This was my best binding yet!

At last, it was time for the label. I knew I had to incorporate an image from the movie. I just love this image from Society 6.

And at 4:25am, eight hours before our departure, the quilt was done! Only God could have given me the endurance to create this entire quilt in a week!

We met up with Erin the day before the funeral to deliver the quilt. Such a special moment, and I'm grateful Niels snapped this photo.

The next day, my waterfall of tears started as soon as I saw that Erin placed the quilt on the steps of the sanctuary. You can tell from this photo that Bob was a fun-loving guy, and I am so grateful to him for all the love and devotion he showered upon my friend. I only wish they could have had more time together.