Sara's Friendship Quilt

I had a really difficult time approaching this last theme in our series. My mind kept coming up with possibilities. I thought of asking my BFF for her fabric scraps to piece a quilt (because friendship is sharing fabric) but she lives on the other end of town and I did not have time in the schedule to visit her this month. I thought of an image I remembered of the backs of my daughter and her best friend feeding ducks in Houston's Herman park when they were in grade school. Alas the photo is my daughter's album was not the best quality image. I thought of the stuffed lamb ("lambie" ) that the girls used when my family's move meant they would not see each other often - lambie went to live in the other's home every time the girls got together. I learned about lambie after my daughter died when lambie went to live with her friend. I kept cycling back to an image of hands since the touch of a friend's hand is so important. I used that imagery in my comfort quilt (busy hands and the hands of a friend) so I wanted something different. I spent much of a month dithering like that. One of my guilds challenged us to make something inspired by a song. I decided to look up songs about friendship and found Bette Midler's " Wind Beneath my Wings". The song reminds me of happy work days at Compaq computer where Rod Canion would play it at company meetings. It also reminded me of a friendship quote I found "We are all angels with only one wing ... we can fly only embracing each other". Once I quit mentally exploring the concept and settled on one concept the quilt practically made itself - once again I learned that to get anything done I need to create "a box" to keep myself restricted on a direction and then get to work.
Here it is:

I created the feathers using some fabric I painted while working on a class assignment with Katie Pasquini Masopust. I wanted a controlled palette of neutrals so I created them by painting fabric with complementary colors (using mostly dyna-flow paint). I had just the right couple of pieces and found a perfect printed sky fabric in my stash. I quilted the tail feathers using gray cotton and the rest of the piece was quilted with Sulky monofilament thread - all on my domestic sewing machine. I did start this series with the goal of trying out something new with each quilt. This time it is pre-painting fabric and a single fold binding that I learned in June from Gwen Marston.

I really enjoyed this project. Jane,this was a very appropriate finale word.  It was so great to meet so many of the people who created this blog last October and it was wonderful to be forced to create to a deadline (my dithering and re-thinking often takes over actual creating something). I must admit my self-challenge to use a new technique with each quilt was starting to feel restrictive but it was certainly worth pursuing. I look forward to the next new and different round.