Final post on "If Only: A Wedding Quilt for Jeremy"

If Only: A Wedding Quilt for Jeremy, 61 x 92", hand-dyed cotton

It's been two and a half months since my last post, where I reported on the decision I'd made about quilting Jeremy's wedding quilt. Since then, I went to the annual quilting retreat for Quilters by Design in the second week of March, just before everything closed in. I was able to show the quilting I'd done, and get thoughts on binding, so when I got home I was ready to finish the quilt. This included ripping out about half the quilting, as I hadn't pinned the layers carefully enough and there was rippling in the bottom half of the quilt.  In the photos below, the left shows a section of the bottom, with rippling, and the right shows a section higher in the quilt, which is smooth, as intended! I think you can see it was worth the work to re-do the quilting.


The next photo shows the back of the quilt. if you click on the photo, you can enlarge it, and you'll be able to see the very simple straight-stitch quilting I did in the ditch, across at each row, and then shorter vertical lines where I could stitch between blocks. From the front, you don't really see the quilting, which is how I wanted it. (The shadowy lines in the back are just the variation in color in the hand-dyed fabric.)

Another detail of the quilt, below. Almost all the small quadrilateral shapes are bright or light colors, but I did include a few black shapes. They needed to be in there too.

The quilt now hangs at the foot of the stairs, close to the front door (off to the left of the photo below).

For the last several years, "Shelter" has hung in that spot. We've now moved it around the corner to the den. The drawing to the left is by Mark Holmes. I like the conversation of the black shapes.

It is good to have both these quilts in places where we will see them every day; "Holiness" is also hung upstairs. It's part of keeping Jeremy with us. It's a comfort to have these and other physical reminders. The small things Jeremy made in wood and metal shop that are still in use. The tiny sapphire earrings that David and I both wear every day in his memory. An item or two of Jeremy's clothing that I wear. And of course, the extended process of making these quilts is itself a way of keeping him present in my life. Other quilts in the series stay put away in a suitcase, the quilts that center on pain, loss, guilt: Loss, Regret, Self-Portrait, Accident, Accident II. I am glad to have exhibited these quilts, but they are too painful to have on view at home.

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Some day I may do a spin-off of the wedding quilt.  Back in February, I had finished the top, and happened to hold it up in front of a window when I was folding it. The piece was beautiful with light coming through. I then pinned it onto a curtain rod, to see how it would look if hung that way.

We have some large windows in the house, and I was tempted to finish it to hang this way. But it wouldn't take long for light to fade and weaken the fabric, so I continued with the original plan to hang it on a wall. But maybe someday I'll make a smaller piece in the same style and wrap it around a frame that could be hung in a window from time to time.

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Finally, for my own use (and yours if you'd like a look back), here's a list of posts about this quilt:

Feb. 17, 2020: Quilting decision made
January 25, 2020: Top completed
August 11, 2019: Editing the composition
May 25, 2019: Back in the studio
Feb. 16, 2019: Steady progress
Feb. 5, 2019: One block at a time
Feb. 4, 2019: A wedding quilt for Jeremy (describes the design process)