John DesCamp came to me with twenty-five ties and a vision. I could tell he’d been noodling on it for a while because his description of it all came tumbling out in bits and pieces, and I kept have to bring the conversation back for clarification.

He’s a big thinker, I’m a details-planner sort, and I had a feeling there would be plenty of details to sort out.

John is now retired, and his ties represent for him a dedicated career in finance, law, and consulting. He declared that he was not planning to ever wear a tie again, but that many of them held special meaning and memories for him. Many of his favorites were some beautiful Hermès ties.

The day after we met in my studio for the first time, he sent me this ball point pen sketch of his quilt concept. My planning brain skipped a beat, but I knew I was up for the challenge. Luckily John turned out to be equal parts visionary and cheer-leader. “I know you can do this,” he said.

In studying his sketch, the issue that concerned me first was his request for “wavy lines” which were meant to illustrate the atmospheric effect that happens right at the horizon as the sun rises and sets. Easy enough to scribble on a page, less so to piece together with fabric across a 90-inch wide quilt. I knew I needed some outside help, and I found it in the form of Hilde Morin, an incredible quilter who specializes in curved piecing. She granted me two hours of her time for a quick and dirty demo in her studio, after which she sent me off with a smile, a wave, and wished me good luck.

One of the design schematics I created incorporated more wavy lines for a watery effect across the entire quilt. We settled on that one, and then I created a color gradation with all of the red, orange, and yellow ties that would eventually be the sun rays.

Each tie needed to be stabilized after it was deconstructed.

And in order to make sure the sun rays and sky came together without gaps or distortion – ties are such uneven shapes – I made a scale pattern for each piece. There is no room for error when using someone’s irreplaceable treasures.

I knew the curved piecing in the water section would take the longest, so I started there. After many tests and mock-ups, I was ready start piecing the real thing. In order for a single tie to stretch across the entire width of the quilt, it needed to be bisected lengthwise and spliced together, which made for challenging fabric usage in creating each curve.

I used freezer paper as my template and drew the long curves by hand.

Once I had all the tie pieces cut apart, they then had to be snipped and glued in preparation for piecing.

Then each tie “wave” was pieced to blue dupioni silk, the ground fabric chosen for the water.

After the painstaking technique of the water section, the sun ray section let me breathe a little more. The gold dupioni made my whole studio shimmer.

One of the reasons I had made individual pattern pieces for the sun ray section was that I was concerned about it making it all the way around 180 degrees. The planning paid off, much to my relief.

I then sewed sky and water together, leaving the insertion of the sun for last.

The sun was 32″ in diameter.

John requested that I allow for a few of the printed-on Hermès labels to show here and there.

The final challenge was insetting the sun. I had to cut, clip, and prepare the hole in the sky/water sections.

And then turn it over and chalk the outline of where I wanted it to show through.

A friend helped support the weight of the quilt as I stitched the sun. We fell in a heap to catch our breath when it was complete.

Nancy Stovall at Just Quilting did an amazing job custom machine quilting the designs. John requested a double wool batting both for warmth and the 3-D effect it created.

Here is the final quilt followed by some details.

An incredible project, five months in the making. John titled the piece Sat, Cit, Ananda, which loosely translates as Existence, Consciousness, Bliss. A tall challenge, but I think we did it. Many thanks to John for trusting me with his sunrise vision.