Colorful Quilt from the Past



Circles of Life, 1998



Some of you may recall that my father recently moved in with my sister and her husband due to some health issues.  He had been living in a retirement center apartment in Boone, NC for the past six years.  My sister-in-law, Debbie, recently gave me two boxes of items from his apartment that she had salvaged for me. 

One was this little log cabin quilt that I gave to my father for Christmas in 1998. 

This quilt is an attempt to copy a quilt that I loved from a book about Quilt National, the wonderful innovative art quilt competition at The Dairy Barn Arts Center in Ohio.

Some of the orange-red strips in the off-center log cabins are from a dancing dress of my mother's.  She and Dad used to enjoy ballroom dancing, and this was my father's favorite of her dancing gowns.  He even painted her full-size portrait wearing that dress.

My mother passed away in 1984 from cancer.  Dad kept that dress in her closet until 1998, when he brought it to me and asked me to make a quilt from it.

I actually made two, Circles of Life, and a more snugly lap quilt.

It was nice to see this one again!  Right now it is adding lots of bright color to my kitchen table.