One pillow or two?

As promise earlier in the week, I want to show you the pillow I made for a customer. Her sister lost a child recently and she had a couple of his favorite tee shirts, which I quilted and made into one pillow. 


I used the backs of the shirts because both had beautiful wing motifs and challenged myself to use the wings for the quilting.  

The backing is this green/beige knit that was in my stash. It worked quite well and didn't pucker at all despite having a good bit of stretch to it.


The background has a simple but small stipple so that the wings and crosses would be the focus. I started out by quilting the entire back of the shirt and, once that was done, measured the usable quilted area so she could decide what size pillow she wanted--20" square. 

So the red shirt became one side of the pillow and the black shirt became the opposite side, giving her a pillow with two usable sides.

The red shirt was much easier to quilt since much of it had stippling and the wings and cross were less intricate. Following the lines was not as difficult as I'd feared. I wish you could see or feel the texture of the wings, especially on the red shirt. I found myself just rubbing my fingertips up and down the wings. Very textural and soft. 

Now the black shirt was another story altogether. Look at the intricate detail of that Celtic cross and those gray wings were difficult to distinguish from each other. There was no get-in-the-zone-and-go kind of quilting! I had to go slow and steady always looking for the next turn or corner and trying to not stop. Stitches lose their pretty, even lengths every time I stop, so the key is to just not stop. Once I did one area, I had to go slow enough on the next to replicate the design. I couldn't quilt every line because that would have messed up the texture. So slow, and steady, and slower it was.

But the end result is stunning! Considering that the end result went to a grieving mother, I am honored to have been the one asked to undertake such a special job. 


What have you done lately that was extra-special?