Jessica's Prayer Quilt

About a month ago, my good friend Jessica was diagnosed with stage IV bone cancer.  She's one of the healthiest people I know, so it came as quite a shock to everyone.  Knowing someone with cancer is hard because you so desperately want to help, yet there is very little you can actually do.  Well, I make quilts.  So on the way to visit her at the hospital I came up with an idea to make her a prayer/blessing quilt.  And to make it more personal, powerful and meaningful to her, I invited everyone she knew to be a part of it by sending me some fabric with a prayer or their name on it.

This is the block I made for Jessica's quilt.  It was my first attempt at paper piecing.  I have a poem to write on it still.

So far I have fabric from 32 people, and am expecting several more pieces by the end of the week.  Because my original idea of how to put this quilt together has changed, what I'm doing with the fabric people sent in varies depending on how big the piece of fabric is, and whether or not there is any writing on it.

The smaller pieces will have a border added to them, and the larger pieces I'm cutting up and then making large quilt blocks out of them.  My plan now is to make all the quilt blocks 12 inches square so it is easy to put them all together for the quilt top.  So far I've made 10 large quilt blocks, and love the way they have turned out.  I'm glad that there will be a lot of quick and easy blocks to just add borders to though, the pieced blocks take a lot more time and energy (and I'm nearly 8 months pregnant with a 2 year old, by the way ;-).

The first 12 fancy blocks.  The final quilt layout will be very different!

I'm touched by the fabric and prayers people have sent, as well as the kind notes people included to me.  Once I have finished making all the quilt blocks and figured out a layout for the front of the quilt, any fabric I get after that will be included in the back of the quilt.  And all the left over fabric scraps (that are still big enough) will be used in a scrappy binding.

I'll try to post photos a couple times of week for those interested in watching this quilt come together!