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| Scrappy Log Cabin | |
| Submitted by: RickyTims | January 08, 2007 |
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The voice on the phone was friendly and enthusiastic and drew me into the project quickly. Karen Risberg, who lived in my hometown of Pembroke Pines, Florida, needed help completing a scrappy log cabin quilt begun by her mother, Jacqueline Tracy Palmer of Long Island, New York, prior to her passing a few years earlier. She had come upon the project, which was being made for Karen, while going through her mother's things. Could I help her?
I could make the time, I had the skill, how could I refuse.
I was expecting Karen to bring over a quilt well under way. What I got was bags of cut strips, boxes of yardage and scrap fabric, and written pattern directions. Each block required 64 pieces of cut fabric, and not one block was made. I had to ensure Karen understood that this was not going to be a quick or inexpensive project. A lot of time was involved in its completion.
"Whatever you charge to finish this quilt will be a small fraction of what I'd have to pay for the psychotherapy if I threw all this out," Karen said.
It proved an interesting adventure, working with fabrics selected by someone else, fabrics that I would not likely have selected. I tend to work in a relatively planned manner, but this quilt was totally scrappy. I tend to use current fabrics, Jacqueline's were calicos and 30s repro fabrics. I prefer lush colors and bold patterns, and hers tended toward the primary colors and small designs.
It took several weeks to complete. As I cut and assembled the fabrics for the blocks, I gained a sense of the person who had envisioned the quilt. A free and caring spirit. A woman who loved to play, to have fun, who gave of herself and was loved in return.
As I watched the quilt come together, I came to appreciate Jacqueline's scrappy approach and intuition. My own quilting style and sense of color grew as the quilt grew.
The quilting was splendidly done by local long-arm quilter Barbara Lacy, with whom I shared the story. She became a willing collaborator in its completion. Bound and labeled, I took the quilt to Karen.
She set it on her sofa in the living room, where she felt certain her mom would have wanted it to be, and we admired it, and her mom's vision. Planned before her passing, completed with the help of others after, now part of her life forever, that quilt was a final bond between Karen and her mother.
Beverley Hilton, APR, CPRC
Pembroke Pines, Florida |
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