E + K, 2025
106" | Made from linen fabric, bamboo-cotton batting, and cotton thread | Foundation paper-pieced, machine and hand-quilted
E + K is a wedding quilt for my younger sister and her partner of over a decade. The popular narrative for Emma and Kevin’s relationship is its length: they are high school sweethearts, the first of their siblings to be in a committed relationship, and the last of them to get married. But it’s also the narrative that was most inspiring to me for their quilt, because I find it so unique.
I chose tree rings as my representation of time. On the year they met, I quilted the ring with white sashiko, and continued it on each ring up until the year they married. But what does anything mean unless it’s compared to your siblings? Within the rings of their relationship, I added radial lines to mark the years between each of us siblings finding and marrying our partners. They’re a lot shorter in comparison.
E + K was designed and made between August 2024 and June 2025 at my home in Austin, TX.
I constructed the quilt through foundation paper piecing, the pattern of which I drafted in Adobe Illustrator. Because I wanted organically-drawn rings and not perfectly-round ones with bits of white and brown fabric interspersed at precise angles, each pattern piece was unique. Any quilter will tell you that a pillowcase binding is not a good idea for a quilt this size, and they are right. I couldn’t imagine the finishing any other way and persevered through a less-than-taut basting process. I haven’t learned my lesson and will definitely do it again.
