This will be the first of four posts showcasing a series of quilts I made (and am still making at the writing of this post) for Judith and her family in Cologne, Germany. The series is based on the four seasons, with each season consisting of one wall hanging and one large bed quilt.

What is different about this set of quilts is that they do not fit easily into any of my quilt categories, or rather, they fit into all of them. They are not strictly memorial quilts because only a fraction of the fabrics belonged to someone who has died. They are not strictly Special Event quilts because there was no obvious occasion that they are commemorating. They are not strictly Studio Quilts because they were commissioned by someone other than myself. The closest category I can come up with is simply Life Quilts. Here is the brief backstory:

About a year ago, Judith, the mother of an amazing German exchange student we hosted over twelve years ago, asked if I would make her a series of quilts “from some fabrics she had saved”. Of course I said yes, and when she wrote to tell me she had shipped them off, I expected to receive a small box of her items. Five large boxes and piles of fabrics later, I thought it best to have a clarifying conversation about scope of work.

Judith explained that she had gone through all of the clothing and fabrics she had been collecting over the years, which included garments and keepsake fabrics belonging to her, her mother and grandmother, and her two daughters. She wanted everything mixed and matched together in a series of quilts whose colors and designs were inspired by the four seasons.

I began by dividing the huge collection into seasonal color groupings just to get a handle on what I had to work with. Once I created the four seasonal designs, Judith and I realized that for each season there was plenty of fabric for a smaller, more detailed wall-hanging, plus a larger double-sided bed quilt that would incorporate as much of the remaining fabrics as possible.

I began with Winter. Since it was winter. I combined lots of the blacks and whites, as well as the dark blues and a few pink-ish accents.

Among this group were some fancy dresses,

some hip tops and printed fabric yardage,

some children’s outfits and white linens,

and some wonderfully textured scarves.

For design inspiration, Judith had sent me a photo of a Japanese shibori kimono pattern she had seen in a recent exhibition in Japan.

I decided to make an abstract snowy-night landscape using primarily black and white fabrics with little color dots depicting falling snowflakes. The pieces were quite narrow, and while I had created a printed schematic to follow, each piece was carefully measured against its neighbor to create the illusion of a gradual curve.

Between each narrow segment would be an even narrower segment that would follow the lines of the “snow” dots.

Here the lighter fabrics were placed on top of the segments they were paired with in order to keep everything well-organized and random looking.

These paired segments have been sewn individually.

Once the entire array of segmented pairs were sewn together, then the multitude of small dots were individually laid out and appliquéd in place. It was vital to me these dots, as well as the vertical lines, had an organic element to them that mirrored the flowing quality of the kimono pattern.

Here is the final wall quilt, Judith’s Winter, followed by a detail.

With the wall piece completed, the majority of the fabrics still remained to make into the larger bed quilt. We had decided that I would improvise the designs for these larger quilts during production, using as much of what was left as I could fit together in bigger blocks. Working this way actually takes longer than one would think, and is also super fun and full of surprises. There is a lot of splicing and measuring with each new section that is added, so what appears to be random has actually all been intentionally placed.

Here is one side of the quilt, followed by a detail.

Here is the reverse side, followed by a detail.

Stay tuned for Judith’s Spring and its coordinating Big Spring Quilt!