My "Ugly" Quilt With a Heart

I belong to two quilt guilds. They are both great groups of creative women. I was invited to join the second guild by my best quilting buddy Lynne in the fall of 2007. She was going to be Vice President of the "second" guild in the 2007 - 2008 year and said it would be fun. Lynne has also been the president of my "first" guild in the 2006-2007 year. The outgoing president of the guild alway puts out a challenge at the end of her tenure. The challenge can be anything and the finished project is due at the January meeting of the next year (in this case January 2008). Lynne hated ugly fabric. So she chose what she considered the most ugly fabric she could find, and challenged us to use it in a small ( 20 X 20 inch) quilt incorporating the fabric. She gave everyone who wanted to participate a fat quarter to use in the quilt.
For quilters this is a great exercise. We can get complacent in our favorite colors, or designs. In the finished quilt pictured the "ugly" or challenge fabric is the red/orange print in the center and on the border.
I set about over the summer and early fall of 2007, using my EQ5 to come up with a design. Also I would only use fabrics in my stash. I also wanted to use a heavy thread for quilting and use the bobbin technique. I accomplished all those things.
'Round about October 2007, Lynne had a bad respiratory cold she couldn't shake. By November she was in the hospital. In the end she had Stage 4 Lung cancer. They had treated her for asthma for about 9 months, then bronchitis then pneumonia. It makes me so angry that this was missed for so long. But I took the out put from my EQ5 to her hospital room. Hung it up with all the other wonderful posters, and cards that people had sent to her. She was buried on the day of the guild meeting to show the President's challenge. I didn't finish the quilt for that meeting - but I did finish it.
Lynne always encouraged me to think outside the box, she was an artist, I am the in the box engineer - where everything has to be "matchy -matchy" This quilt has a prime position in my studio to remind me of Lynne and to keep stretching my creative side.