Hello!

A quilt that has been in the making for 9 years is finally complete! My Día de los Muertos quilt is finally quilted and bound and is hanging in the Milwaukie Airing of the Quilts show this coming weekend. I won’t be able to go to the show to see it but am excited to get it back and be able to start using it.

This quilt came about because I wanted to do a quilt in remembrance of my uncle who passed away in August 2009. I wanted to celebrate his life similar to those in Latin American cultures by making a Day of the Dead quilt. Unfortunately, in the time period it took me to make this quilt my grandmother and then grandfather passed away. I have dedicated this quilt to all three of them on the label.

I found what I thought was the perfect sugar skull fabric and I believe it’s by Alexander Henry. I made most of the Stack n’ Whack blocks in 2009 but it hung out waiting to be put together. Several years later I had finished it and it went to my mom to longarm quilt. We couldn’t agree on a quilting pattern because I wanted something custom and she wanted to do Edge-to-Edge. It turned out that custom quilting was not the way to go and my mom didn’t like how it turned out. She decided to rip it out and it ended up sitting for several years waiting for it to happen. My mom worked on ripping out the quilting in the last year or so. She ripped it out from the back so as not to damage the front of the quilt. She wasn’t able to reuse the backing fabric because it got some holes in it during the ripping out process. A new wide back was purchased and it was quilted. My mom even bound it for me because she wanted to put it in the quilt show.

I have a custom label that will be printed out for this quilt and I decided to put a picture of a marigold on the label because it guides the spirits to the altar by their vibrant colors and scent. I don’t have an altar but I do have this quilt and for me I hope that by using it I have wonderful memories of my family members.

Happy Quilting!

Camille