36. Kimball's Quilt

No sooner had the notion of a book crossed my mind than I ran away from the tyranny of this scary idea by plunging into a project of an entirely different nature: two quilts joined as one. Here's the how and why.

This quilt wasn't made to further my career and was hung in only one quilt show. Its true purpose was to pay tribute to a long-time friend who was retiring as our church's Minister of Music. It is a sad (to me, anyway) truth that the idea of a quilt might never have occurred to anyone in our congregation, even had I jumped up and down waving fabric in the air as we discussed how to celebrate his illustrious career as organist and choir director. It was up to me to suggest that a quilt made especially for him and signed by members of the congregation would be a fitting tribute and that I wanted to be the one to make it. Believe me, I'm not usually so brazen about promoting my personal passion, but this was one of the times when I felt a powerful and irresistible urge to make a special quilt for a special person, and the moment called for extra boldness.

Once given the "okay" by our church, I set out to weave together the imagery of Kimball's strong ties to Vermont and his strong ties to our church and its music program. But those two themes would not play nicely together, no matter how hard I tried. Thus the two sides shown above, two tops, each quilted individually with its own batting and then joined by invisibly stitching the battings together. A single binding unites the edges. To my eye, the landscape quilt references a New England scene; if you were able to look very closely, you would see two tiny cows in one of the green fields, and if you got even closer than that, you would observe that the quilting stitches near them say "Ben" and "Jerry"--definitely Vermont cows. The other quilt top references an architectural structure on the wall behind the altar in our church, where pieces of wood "hide" the organ pipes and provide a backdrop for a backlit cross suspended in front of them. Even as I write this description I realize, finally, that each side bears a "pastoral" theme.

The quilt succeeded, both as heartfelt tribute and as spur to devising some new techniques. It also offered me a respite from worrying about my next career move, allowing me a peaceful time and space to consider the "elephant in the studio"--the big unknown of writing a book.