Dignity Quilt for Shalom Manor

Last year the nursing home I used to work at asked me if I would make a Dignity Quilt for them.

A dignity quilt is a quilt that is used to cover someone after they pass away and are being taken to the funeral home.

This is part of the Death with Dignity movement among nursing homes and other long term care.

I loved the Mystery Quilt Pattern so I made another one. (here's the blog about the first one)

They wanted this to be about 5 feet by 7 feet. 

This is about that :) I forgot measure it when it was done!

I had my quilter use her flutterby pattern as butterflies are often used in hospice 

I had a friend embroider a label for me so it will last longer through washings

signed

They also wanted a pillow case to store it in

So I used the leftover fabric

and here it is inside

related news:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150329_At_some_nursing_homes__a_changing_attitude_toward_death.html

Quilting Retreat Sept 3013

Thanks to Abigail weaning and mostly to +Dave DeBaeremaeker for being so awesome! I was able to go to my quilting guilds bi-annual retreat! 

so here are a few photos and below is an album with all of them. 

enjoy!

So I left Friday morning about 9:30 am getting to the retreat center at 11 or so. (some construction traffic too)

 We stayed up in the mountains near Banner Elk, NC. It was fairly chilly up there when I got there. But it felt so good to sleep with the window open.

We had rooms to stay in and this great room to quilt in. 

On Friday night we got to play Strip Poker. 

Everyone brought 20 holiday themed strips of fabric. 

there was a dice that had: 

C-put one in the center

L-pass one to the left

R- pass one to the right

*- take the whole pile

X- skip a turn (there were 2)

(apparently these dice were from a game called Left, Right, Center I think)

We also added that as soon as the center (kitty) was empty everyone put one in. 

and then we just played in clockwise order. 

Once you were out of strips- you were out. 

We also decided that one of the loose a turns should be "take one from center" for the next time we play this. Which should be at our christmas dinner. 

This could be used with any strips theme- red, white, blue or florals etc. 

^^ Winners ^^

We also had a Challenge for while we were there. Everyone was given the same 10 floral fabrics and had to use all of them in creating something. anything. 

Since I was there for such a short time- i created and made something that seemed fastest and easiest to me. 

I only used 2.5 inches of the sample bits for my "English Garden" doll quilt. I was only there for one night so I didnt bring much with me so the yellow/beige is one fat quarter as well as the green. the binding I got from someone else. 

here is my basket that I made as one of our little projects. 

I made the small little basket from the scrap of the big bag. THAT was a pain to make that small. 

The doll is a challenge project from someone else. 

Group Photo

By clicking the photos below you can see more of the challenge projects and more of the quilters. 

My Challenge quilt.

our quilt guild offered up a chance to do a Challenge Quilt. 

We were given 3 fabrics we HAD to use a recognizable sized piece and were only allowed to add another 5 fabrics.

We had to have 3 types of embellishments and one had to be from nature. 

We also had to have once appliqued piece.

The total size of quilt had to be 16x16 to 40x40 = less than 160inches total around. 

And finally the artist name had to be quilted in.

The Quilt had to be based on a memory and a short story was to be written up. 

The quilts were displayed at the Summer Supper (blog post here) where each member in attendance got to vote on them based on the story as well as the quilt.

I had some issues getting this quilt done since it was due the beginning of June and we got our fabric in March. Of course I didnt start it right away. 

In March I was working on the scavenger hunt photos. Plus I was getting bigger and bigger and it was harder to spend time cutting fabric. 

Then I had Abigail and wasnt quilting for a few weeks after that. 

May brought another scavenger hunt to take photos for. By the time I got a hold of the quilt guild the quilt was due that week. I was given an extra week thankfully! 

Here are some pictures of my quilt and the process.

This was my first time doing any kind of paper piecing. I couldnt find a tent that I liked so I found a picture and tried my hand at it. I only did the tent like that and I really should have done a lot more because it was hard getting seams to lie flat after.

added embellishments and basted (mostly)

Quilting it in the car on the way to the Flash Mob (link)

I think Dave likes it

yep!

All done! in shade

In sun

 With my story (read it below)

initials quilted in the moon

 you can sort of see them in orange on the back

 the tent quilted

 Embellishments: the flowers, buttons and sticks (from nature)

Applique: fire, moon, and bike (kinda) 

Challenge Quilt 2012

I am from a family of 4 kids. In this memory I was about 12, my brother about 11, and my sisters were 7 and 5. 

When I was growing up we lived on a dairy farm. My dad had to be home twice a day to milk the cows making it hard for us to go on vacation. 

Our vacations consisted of going to a campground about 10 minutes away from our house. We loved going camping. My dad would often come into the house in the morning on a Thursday or Friday and ask mom if we wanted to go camping that weekend. Them mom would call up the campground to see if “our spot” was available. She would try to get us the same spot each time we went. We would go camping on the Island section where there was no water or power hook up but there was a tap close by. The Island also gave us a limited range of where to ride our bikes. We could bike anywhere as long as we didn’t cross the bridge.

Biking on the island was easy, there was only one hill. This hill was a problem for my youngest sister. She was just learning how to bike with her training wheels.

She tried so hard to keep up with us but she had one problem. At the bottom of the hill there was a turn in the road. She would build up too much speed and not be able to make the turn crashing her bike almost every time she went down it. 

That summer she crashed into the campsite right below the hill so many times that there was a path worn though the small patch of trees from that site to ours. 

After that summer spent patching up skinned knees and elbows our family dubbed that hill “Missy’s Hill” and we still refer to it as that to this day, although it looks a whole lot less steep than it did back then.

~~Debbie DeBaeremaeker

Requirements:

Size: 17x18

Fabrics: 3 challenge fabrics + 5 others: sky, trees, ground, yellow and red in fire

Embellishments (one nature): buttons, sticks, iron on flowers

Applique: moon, fire, bike

Artist name hidden in quilting: initials hidden in moon