Louisa Enright's Blog

Turkey Tracks:  December 18, 2014

“Remembering…Louise Phillips Bryan, 1892-1981” Quilt

I mailed this quilt to sister Susan Heath this week.

It’s one of the prettiest quilts I’ve ever made, and it was made in memory of my beloved grandmother Louise Phillips Bryan of Reynolds, Georgia.  I had the most amazing relationship with her, and to this day, I can hear her big hearty laugh, see her twinkling brown eyes, and know that she “had my back” no matter what.  I spent a lot of time with her growing up, and one of my fond memories is sitting in her back yard one afternoon, our feet propped up on a pole, singing old songs together.  She was so much fun.  She was a gardener, a seamstress, a knitter, made sure the table in her dining room held nourishing, delicious food every day, and was a savvy and successful card player.  I could go on and on about her, as like many others, I loved her so dearly.  Brown was my grandmother’s favorite color–she had dark fine curly hair and brown eyes.

Susan fell in love with this quilt as it grew on the design wall during her last visit.  So I gave it to her.

This quilt is a split nine-patch, and I started it as Bonnie Hunter issued this block as a  leader-ender challenge a while back.  A leader-ender project is where one works on a block whenever one needs to cut thread while working on another quilt.  You can see Bonnie’s version of this quilt easily as she has it on the banner of her web site, quiltville.com, at the moment.  Or, it’s on the blog, which you can get to from the main site.  I LOVE Bonnie’s version–it’s more modern and uses a different setting.

With light/dark blocks, setting possibilities are endless.  I adapted a setting used by Lynn Roddy Brown in the Jan/Feb 2014 (#155) issue of Quiltmaker Magazine.

Here are some close-ups of this quilt that was made with dozens of different fabrics out of my deep stash:

I quilted with a gold/brown thread, using a pantograph called “Arcadia” from Urban Elementz.

Here’s the backing:

And the label: