Love, by Michele

A grandmother's love
Stitching through the threads of time
Unconditional

When I thought about the theme of love, I thought about romantic love, then the love of a dog, then about other types of unconditional love, which led me to my grandmothers, Grandma Dunaway (Goldie) and Memaw (Opal). My grandmothers were the fountainhead of my love for crafts in general and fiber in particular. They were generous with their scrap bins and button tins, my love for which continues to this day.

In keeping with my personal goal of challenging myself to try something new with the challenges, I decided to weave the background. I didn't obsess about color and deliberately limited myself to the two small bags of strips I had in the dining room when I started. Well, almost - I picked up a couple of other strips while searching for other needed stuff throughout the house.

As usual, the design changed along the way. The original plan was be to machine FMQ and bind. I had the strips woven and pinned, and the hearts cut out, and decided there were too many pins to FMQ, so I started closely hand basting around the edge. I liked how it looked, so I just quilted the rest of the piece by hand, in big stitches. The more I quilted, the more the edges didn't want to be bound! While I was working on it, both the quilter in residence at the Arts Barn and my daughter the artist asked me if I was going to bind the edges, both with that unspoken undercurrent of "Don't bind it! Leave it uneven!"

The two hearts are my two grandmothers - the commercial gold for Goldie (Grandma) and some snow dyed fabric for Opal (Memaw). The embroidery floss I used to blanket stitch the hearts came from Memaw's stash, as did at least one of the buttons.