Dianne and I had a special friendship. The kind that is borne from being a stay-at-home mom with babies, toddlers and preschoolers, where you consider yourself lucky if you can find one kindred spirit, one other mom with whom you can share your heart, your soul, and as many laughs as you can afford. We shared so many adventures, and now that she's gone, there are stories too many to count.
Twenty years after her death, Dianne's stepmother, Linda, and daughter, Jasmine, were going through a box of sewing projects that Linda had stashed away. They came across "the infamous shirt-and-tie-quilt," a quilt that Dianne was working on while she was fighting her last battle with cancer.
No one liked the quilt, not even Dianne. Especially not Dianne. "All she did was complain about that quilt," Jasmine told me. "We all got tired of hearing about how much she hated the stupid shirt-and-tie-quilt."
No one wanted the quilt, not even Dianne's husband, for whom she was making it.
I remembered her talking about the shirt-and-tie-quilt, but it was all gibberish to me. I didn't quilt at all then, and barely sewed a stitch on anything. I couldn't imagine, though, why it would be so difficult for Dianne, who had tackled huge quilts before.
So when Linda and Jasmine asked me to finish the shirt-and-tie-quilt I immediately said yes. I was honored to be the one to finish Dianne's work. It arrived in a large box, the unfinished quilt, all the fabric scraps from what was already pieced, new fabric for what was not yet pieced, some background fabric, a book with the pattern, and some things that I can't to this day tell you what it was part of or how I was supposed to use it. I saw that some of the quilt was appliqued and I did not like to applique.
The whole box was so intimidating, I packed it all back up, stuck it in a corner of my sewing room, and sent Linda and Jasmine a note: "I can't make any promises. But I'll try."
When I dove into the project, I started to see the genius in Dianne's quilt design. What first appeared to be random scraps of fabric turned into little dress shirts with button-down collars and neckties, started to become clear that Dianne had carefully chosen fabrics that looked like they should be shirts and fabrics that looked like they should be ties.
I took apart the blocks Dianne had finished and sewn together, made an additional block of my own (learning to like applique just a little bit in the process), rearranged the blocks, made a border of bow ties, added a couple more borders and -- just like that -- finished!
I ended up doing the quilting myself, which is a first for me. The buttons on the shirt collars prevented me from sending it to Mary at Longarmed and Dangerous to be run through the longarm quilter. Knowing Dianne and her "Just Do It!" spirit, I thought she would approve of me forging ahead and learning as I went. And I swear I could hear her laughing as I muttered, "I hate this stupid shirt and tie quilt."
But it turned out to be a beauty in its own way. All the time I spent working on it, I spent with Dianne.
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To learn more about these quilts and Diane's other quilting projects, contact her at diane.fitzpatrick@mac.com. And check out her Instagram page.
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