Recovery quilt

I have to finish this quilt, I just have to. It’s a “recovery quilt” for Genevieve, my 29-year-old daughter who had a liver transplant in November and is now undergoing chemotherapy for bile duct cancer. Genevieve has been covering up in her daughter Danica’s 1st birthday quilt, which is flannel-backed and cozy, or the “Log Cabin in Black and Gold,” which is fairly small (a picture appears at the right). I gave her the log cabin quilt to cover up during her pre-transplant chemo, but she needs another quilt now.



The story of Genevieve’s cancer is a long one. She has a blog, which she (or me) updates periodically. Read about her at http://pscgenevieve.blogspot.com/  The liver transplant is going well—there have been no rejection episodes. But biopsies found that she had cancer in 1 of 30 lymph nodes plus 3 bile ducts removed during the transplant. Thus the after-transplant chemo, which is really throwing her for a loop. She can barely move from bed to couch. I’d give anything to trade places with her. Make me sick, not her. But life doesn’t work like that, of course. So … I’m worried about making her a quilt. What kind of a quilter would I be if she didn’t have a recovery quilt, made by me especially for her?

I started this in February, I think. I wanted Genevieve to have a pretty quilt that would look nice in her living room. My fabric inspiration was a small charm pack of William Morris fabrics I received as a door prize at a quilt shop. The 5-inch squares (at bottom left) were so pretty, but what to do with them? It’s easy to convert squares to triangles, so I decided on pinwheels. I bought another charm pack, a few more pieces of William Morris prints (at the left), and added more florals from my collection. I decided to use a lot of green, which Genevieve likes, and I added the black polka-dot fabric, which you might think is odd in a floral quilt. But I like the way it picks up the black in two of the florals and keeps the whole thing from being overly sweet. To my eye, it adds a more modern, youthful flair.