Funeral Pall

In the spring of 2012 I had the opportunity to take a 6 hour class from Diane Hire, an improvisational quilter. I learned techniques in her class, but I did not apply them until our sewing group was commissioned by our pastor to make a funeral pall. Here’s a photo of a pall from a church supply company.

Our initial thought was that we wanted to create a piece of art that would incorporate not only Christian symbolism, but also give the congregation an opportunity to be a part of the finished work. To that end, we asked people to give us fabrics in golds, oranges, and yellows for the cross, and whites and off-whites for the background. The variety of fabrics we received was amazing. We received, tablecloths, pillowcases, T-shirts, ties, hand made lace, upholstery fabric, bridal fabric, and more. We tried to capture the individuality of each submitted fabric.

A plan was created and the group began to sew blocks. The blocks were 4.5” squares and were intentionally created to be wonky. most of the blocks contain at least ten different fabrics. It was labor intensive. Last week the blocks were completed and we laid them out on the floor. We spent a lot of time arranging and re-arranging until the design pleased us.

At this point, the group project becomes an individual project as the quilt is assembled and quilted. I’ll keep you posted.