Sketch quilt

The quilt that I've titled "Generations" is finished. This was my entry to a challenge presented by my art quilt group. The guidelines were that it should be 15" x 24" vertical and monochromatic. We drew color chips from a bag and mine in a rosy sepia color. I know that most will have an array of colors, but I wanted to challenge myself to using a minimal span of colors. Maybe because of the sepia color, I jumped on the idea to do my grandparents wedding picture. The project snowballed and I also did my parents, my in-laws and on the bottom, my husband and me. The quilt has been quilted by machine and by hand.

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The figures were drawn with a Pitt pen and I brushed on color from oil paint sticks. The close-up is of my in-laws, Betty and Don. OK, there is something "off" in each portrait, but the love is there. In fact, it was a more emotional project than I have anticipated. I kept thinking about how each of the ancestors were married "until death do us part", the shortest was about 35 years. Really, there is no formal picture of my parents, so their drawings were done from a 1943 picture-they were married in 1939. I had on a silly headpiece that you can see was crooked in this picture. How unimportant the clothing-what is important is the marriage. A fancy wedding is no guarantee of a successful marriage.

Later this month, I will be able to see how other met this challenge. I've sure that there will be a wide variety of designs.