Wayne's Quilt

The holidays are over, and I had a great visit with my Mom and sisters in Iowa and Illinois. It was fun to spend a few days with each of them. And weather being what it always is – unpredictable – was just that. Even though the predictions were for decent weather, we had rain, sleet, and snow, all in the same day. They had quite an ice storm in Cambridge, Illinois where my sister Marcia and her husband Don Ekin live. They lost power on Monday morning and didn't get it back until early Wednesday morning - the whole time I was there. Luckily they had installed a whole house generator in their new home so we had all of the comforts of home - lights, heat, hot water, etc.

At Wayne's Celebration of Life, I displayed a quilt that I made for him years ago that had photos of his early childhood years, his first car, our wedding, some Viet Nam photos, celebrating 25 years at Penneys, etc. The photo of our wedding was much talked about - we were really thin 52 years ago when we were married, and my dress was the fashion of the day - lots of lace. In fact, I wore a hoop skirt underneath it. Anita and Dick Shackelford were at the Celebration, and Anita took the quilt home to add some quilting to the frames around each of the photos. Our photographer, Charley Lynch, took a photo of the quilt for me so we can preserve the images on the quilt.

You see, I made this way back before we had printable fabric to print our photos on. I used the old method of using photocopies and Mod Podge to secure the photos to the fabric. I have no idea how long those photos on the fabric will last.

Here is the photo of the whole quilt.

The plaid fabric used in the sashing was a woven plaid from India that had been used for a promotion at the JCPenney store, and I used colors in the plaid to make frames for the photos that were all different sizes. I knew I couldn't match the plaid both vertically and horizontally, so what did I do? I cut the plaid on the bias. Yikes, what was I thinking?! When I basted the layers together, I basted it every four inches in both directions to keep those sashing strips from stretching. That worked! The cornerstones in the sashing in the cotton fabric gave some stability to the sashing too.

Thank you Anita Shackelford for quilting the frames. I had stitched in the ditch along the sashing and again around the photos. We can call this quilt all done now.

And now you can all enjoy this quilt of the life of Wayne Browning too!