It’s not often that the clothing I receive for my memorial quilts so clearly reflects a person’s passion and life work. Mark spent his career in city planning for the city of Los Angeles and West Hollywood. He loved to travel and he loved architecture, both of which were illustrated in many of the ties in his collection.

In addition to his ties, his partner, Lucy, also sent me a selection of his travel shirts. She shared that Mark was a huge fan of the modernist architect, Mies van der Rohe, and in particular, his Chicago buildings. We both agreed that architecture provides great inspiration for a quilt’s structure.

I researched many of van der Rohe’s Chicago projects and landed on Cunningham Hall, one of three housing towers he designed for The Illinois Institute of Technology in 1955.

I liked the opportunity this design offered for varying thicknesses of dividers and panes, and I decided to use the colorful ties as the window mullions. Set against the solids of the window pane shirts, the ties became this bright matrix of line work.

One of Mark’s ties was just solid black with a dashed road line running down the middle.

In looking at different historical photos of the building, I was drawn to the ones that showed some of the windows with the shades closed or the lights on or off. I liked the way it conveyed human life residing within. It also allowed me to use different colored shirts across the quilt and not run out of any one fabric.

Here is the final quilt, followed by a detail. I chose a very simple quilting pattern of parallel vertical lines to enhance the feeling of “building-ness”.