OUR QUILT HAD TO BE HEIRLOOM QUALITY
Wikipedia defines "heirlooms" this way.
Heirlooms, like antiques, and stories are cherished and lovingly passed down from one generation to the next.
Once we had finalized our criteria on the concept of our quilt our attention turned immediately toward the design. Our number one uncompromising point was that it had to be an Heirloom quilt. Whatever it took, it had to have the quality in materials and craftsmanship to last decades. So generations could be blessed. Whether it was in a church or with an individual family. Future individuals, such a great-great-great-grandchildren or brothers and sisters in the future church, should the Lord tarry, will be blessed by the testimony of the individual whose picture or message is on the quilt.
After much research, we decided on a purple quilt with gold binding: A large cross in the middle with four frames at the bottom: with four messages displayed – one in each frame.
How could we display the message?
We found a fabric with history.
We found a new technology.
We had accomplished our goal.
We ran into a concern with the materials the message would be displayed on.
Everything else up to this point, was heirloom quality. The fabrics, textures, sewing, quilting, wooden boxes, would last for generations. All technologies required old world skilled craftsman but the silk screen or embroidering technologies that we tried didn’t meet our standards of a generational quilt. Silk screen, we felt, could fade and crack, and embroidery, though a better choice, just didn’t look right. We began to think of state of the art. What was new that would meet our requirements?
Most fabrics, even though not exposed to sunlight, tend to deteriorate with just plain shelf life over time.
In our research, we found a fabric with a history, if properly cared for, of staying pristine for 50 years or more. Many of you know this already. It’s the wedding dress material. Some dresses have been stored in hope chests for decades and still look like new. Like the one used in our picture, which was worn in 1969! After selecting the color we needed to compliment the color of our quilt design we were left to figure out how to put the message on it and have the generational quality that was required.
We found a new, totally different process with state of the art equipment that met our generational requirements.
It’s called “sublimation”. It takes our fabric and dyes it with the color of purple we need to match the quilt. It doesn’t “print” or “sew” anything on the fabric but actually dyes the fibers. It’s like the factory original dye in the fabric. We were really impressed with it. So, the message in the wedding dress material has the same long listing qualities as the dye of the wedding dress itself. This met our generational requirements.
Our design in all ways, fabric, sewing, and dying, useing truly old-world craftsmanship plus the newest state-of-the-art dying processes, is an heirloom generational quilt.
The display design of the quilt is that is can hang on the wall of a church or home like a home décor tapestry or it can hang on one of our specially made easels even in a funeral service.
When displayed at a funeral service it is not something that could be missed.
My Legacy Quilt is perfectly designed to fit on any adult casket.
It fits perfectly from the right side of the opening to the end of the casket. The quilt lays over the casket and is weighted enough so it won’t slip off. The cross is dominant at the top. But, the letters of the message are bold and large enough to be read by the congregation for some distance. It is obviously easy to read when coming up close to the casket. If displayed in a funeral service it is not something that could be missed. Everyone will see it. The banner ”Jesus is Lord” at the top of the quilt is the overriding message in the quilt.
