In preparation for an appliqué quilt workshop I’m teaching I made this little sample quilt to share with the students. When I began this quilt I was totally unsure of where it would go. It began with a sky blue indigo dyed background and this white appliquéd swag border.

With appliqué quilts I often work sort of backwards by creating a border first and then filling it. Once I had the white swag border in place I decided to add another border of flowers. When both borders were complete I was still feeling super unsure about where this piece would go. I put it aside a few days and then this idea about a legacy quilt started bubbling up. An illustrative piece about my family.

After the flower border I added Tommy and I because that’s where our farming story began. Then I added our home and the tree with six big roots—one for each of us because this is where we’ve put our roots down. When we first became stewards of this land there were hardly any trees but Tommy planted hundreds of them around the perimeter as a windbreak. He planted several orchards and willows, lilacs, junipers, honey locust and so many other species. They began as tiny little vulnerable beings and it was difficult for me at that time to imagine the day they would no longer be tiny. Now twenty years later, many of those trees are big. The fast growing species tower above us and give us their gift of shade. The slower growing fruit trees are strong enough now to hold the weight of their fruit on a good fruit year. Birds cannot resist a good tree and now there are hundreds who make their seasonal nests here. Nests in the elms, in the willows, nests in the eaves and even nests in our dryer vent. It’s hard now to remember how quiet is once was all those years ago when the birds weren’t yet around. Along with trees, birds have become part of our legacy.

Our four children had a pretty wild and free upbringing on the land. They were alongside us taking part in all of it from cleaning out barns, herding sheep, milking goats, and all the planting and harvesting. I got out the photo albums to recreate some of my favorite scenes like our son driving the tractor. Our dog Bongo rode on the tractor with the boys and Zip also was inseparable from them so they are a special part of this piece.

The bigger appliqué pieces were needle turned but the smaller pieces were left raw edge. I plan to frame this one so the raw edges will stay intact. The fibers used in this piece are mostly hemp and organic cotton. It was hand quilted with sashiko thread in a freehand allover method that sort of sums up our way of not having much of a plan and figuring things out as we go. The quilt measures 32” x 32”. It felt good to work on a personal piece that will be with us forever and perhaps even passed down when our time has come.