When I create a custom quilt pattern for a client based on the things they share about their loved one, my ideas for the design can sometimes percolate slowly, or they can present themselves in an instant. In the case of Angela’s quilts that would honor her late husband Jason, the design direction was clear from the moment we hung up the phone from our first conversation.

Listening to Angela talk about Jason, I listened for specific things that influenced who he was as a person. In addition to being an amazing father, incredibly social and fun to be around (and not just a little stubborn), Jason had devoted much of his younger life to playing baseball. He was an impressive and talented player.

I decided to begin my design explorations with the idea of a baseball “diamond”.  I looked at different schematics of baseball diamonds, drew up some of my own, and created a series of abstracted visual interpretations of baseball field topography.

Angela requested three quilts: one for her and one each for her son and daughter, all to be made from the same design. I started off making the one for her daughter, who also happened to love the color pink. There were plenty of beautiful hues and patterns to select from each quilt grouping.

In the design Angela chose, there were four distinct “diamonds”, each made from three different fabrics.

I like to contrast adjacent solid and plaid pieces as much as I can.

I also needed to be careful to use every triangle off-cut for the edge blocks in order not to waste fabric.

Here is the final quilt, followed by two details:

The next quilt was for Angela’s son. There were some great gingham plaids as well as some specific sport shirts Angela wanted me to be sure to include.

It was really nice to have so many plaids in different colors and scales.

Having more than one shirt in a similar color to piece together for the border was fortuitous.

Here is the final quilt, followed by two details:

Now that I had made one quilt with warm pinkish hues and second with cool blue-green hues, I combined the two in Angela’s quilt.

The red plaid against the charcoal wool trousers was delightful.

This eye-catching blue plaid with the red accent made sense to be pieced as one of the center smaller squares. After the quilt had been pieced and quilted, I was happy it could make a second appearance for the entire binding.

Since Angela’s quilt was slightly bigger than the other two, I needed to make a double border.

Here is the final quilt, followed by two details:

Thank you, Angela, for sharing a part of Jason with me and for trusting me in this process.