New Quilt: The Monsters

 Back in 2022 my mom was working on a quilt of all our many rescued dogs over the years.  She made  custom silk screens for many decades of family dogs and printed them on pieced fabric blocks.  Her quilt turned out great; it's called "Best Beloved".  This isn't all our family dogs, but it's most of them from the past 50 years.  Only a couple are missing,  notably my parents' dogs Kachina and Marigold, but really she got almost all of them. 

From top left (those with * have gone over rainbow bridge): Swatch, Jackson*, Jordy*, Maggie the elder*, Gibby*, Cab*, Auto, Fawn*, Skunk*, Mac*, Taxi*, Maggie the younger*, Swatch and Shooter*, Blue, Wrinkles*, Shooter*, Missy*, Pumpkin*, Calais*, Bentley*, Bullett*, Spooky, Talute*, Checker, Jenny*, Angel*, Boo* and Cassie*, ?, Pepper* and Peanut*, Strider*

Shortly after she made all the silk screens, I was at home visiting and decided to use her process to make one of Brett's dog Cash, and made this wall hanging for him as a birthday present.

But at the same time I decided to make a few prints of the dogs of mine that were on mom's quilts.  Making the screens was a lot of work for her and I thought they were super cute so I went ahead and printed plain blocks featuring all of my dogs that she'd had on there figuring some day I'd do something with them. 

Not too long ago I was desperately searching for something else (not tellin what at this point) and came across the blocks and decided I should just make them into a quilt.  They weren't doing any good sitting in a drawer and I love seeing the pups and I loved all the bright colors.  In the same drawer were a bunch of English Paper Piecing flowers I'd started years ago and I felt like their scrappy fun vibe fit with the blocks.  

A few years ago I had been into EPP for handwork, but the needle wound up hurting my hands and I set them aside in favor of other handwork, mostly knitting and embroidery. But I had several put together and a bunch more cut out and in little baggies.  I just wound up piecing all the leftover ones together by machine and then using them for this project.  I named it The Monsters because that's what I (lovingly) always call the pups.  I love all the bright colors and rainbow threads and flower garden blocks and especially the pictures of the pups.

The Monsters, 2025, 40x40 c. Shannon Conley

Bentley*

Spooky

Bullett*

Missy*

Blue

Shooter*

Pumpkin*

Angel*

This is just a happy quilt.  I'm so pleased to have made something fun with the blocks and to have it up on my wall so I can see all my monsters whenever I walk into the room.