Monday, June 13, 2011

Dogs & Cats: My Sister's Quilt

My sister has raised puppies for the Seeing Eye® program in Delaware for a long time now. In 2004 I came up with the idea for a quilt to commemorate all the puppies she has raised, many of which went on to help the blind and visually-impaired. Some who failed their tests became her pets. This quilt sports pictures of all of her pets and Seeing Eye® puppies through 2004. Since that time, we have made up more photo blocks with the hopes of appliqueing them over one of the flowered areas (not sure how that's going).


This quilt pattern was adapted from the book Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift. The Quiltmaker's Gift is a lovely children's picture book written by Jeff Brumbeau, and illustrated by Gail De Marcken, published in 2001. Directions for many of the quilts pictured in the storybook are given in "Quilts From" and a second quilt book.


The quilt you see on the cover of the quilt book is the one my sister's quilt has been adapted from. I changed all the measurements so as to accommodate a 5 x 7 inch photo. My sister supplied the photos, of course, and the logo & dates. I cropped, arranged and sized them on Photoshop, and printed them out on special photo-fabric.
There are some great photos on here! The ones with the logo are the Seeing Eye® puppies, those without were not part of the program.


I believe the quilt is full-sized and machine quilted by me in a random loopy pattern (this was my early days of machine quilting). It was begun in 2004 and finished by the end of the year. I should note here that it appears that I never took a picture of the entire quilt. I suppose I was trying to get closer so that the photos would show up. Here I have placed two "half pictures" in rough approximation.

3 comments:

  1. Aside from the idea behind it, which is inspired, that quilt is just beautiful in its composition and coloring. Not too shabby for a "beginner", I'd say.

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  2. Oh, this is not an early quilt, those were in the early 80s and were - gasp - tied or hand-quilted. It is, however, the 2nd quilt I machine quilted (though I practiced on a lot of table runners).

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  3. My sister says: "I have had 17 dogs, 2 shepherds, 2 goldens, 8 labs and 5 crosses(mix of lab and golden) I really like this quilt and have added pics along the way, but I am behind some. A couple personal pets on there as well. Had to take the quilt down(which was outfitted so it can be hung on the wall) because of kittens, recently. I don't want them crawling up it."

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