Quilt #115: Mrs. Knoch's Labyrinth Walk

A warm welcome to all those who are visiting from Amy's Creative Side's Fall Bloggers Quilt Festival!  Glad to have to you hear! I hope you stay and poke around.

Earlier this month, I set my One Monthly Goal this quilt, which has been on my to-do queue for several years, ever since I saw this floating boy on Facebook. 

I have reverse photo searched, Facebook-stalked and looked high and low for the source of this photo to no avail. If you know the quilter who made this quilt, please let me know in the comments so I can give proper credit.

I am drawn to illusion quilts, which is ironic because I often deal with vertigo as a result of my traumatic brain injury. There is something in me that loves the challenge of making sense of things that mess with the brain!

Speaking of making sense of things, the recipient of this quilt is D's school counselor Mrs. Knoch. D has matured so much over the last two years since he started meeting with her. When big emotions overwhelm him, I see him intentionally trying to put the techniques he's learned into practice. She has helped me, too, to better understand how his unique brain works and how to help him with the things that challenge him.

This is D's last year in his school and I am trying hard to make quilts for many of the special staff who have made his years there so wonderful. You can see photos of the seven quilts I have made so far on my September One Monthly Goal post. 

I usually post the label last, but in this case, it helps explain why I choose this pattern for a school counselor.

The quilt is called Labyrinth Walk, and was designed by Christopher Florence, aka the Guilty Quilter. 

I chose red, black, gray, and white for my quilt because Red is Mrs. Knoch's favorite color. Each of the prints has a metallic silver element to it.

The pattern is very well written, but it had to mess with me a little bit. After cutting all my pieces, and making the sub-parts, I checked to make sure that I had all the elements in all the right amounts. I was missing one pieced section. I checked through my project box again. Still missing. One more time, I took everything out and systematically went through the list. Still missing. Fine. I'll make another set. A few days later, I finished piecing the quilt and what was left on my table?

I can't explain it.

As soon as I finished the first block, I knew I was going to love this quilt.

Other than a few pieces playing hide and seek, and a few times I kicked myself for choosing two directional prints, the piecing went together really easily.

Tons of quilters have made this pattern, and I think there have been a ton of different ways that it has been quilted. I decided not to do a spiral as I have done for the last few quilts. I quilt on my domestic machine, and am just learning free motion. I'm far from confident enough to free motion a quilt, I decided to quilt straight lines on the gray and black pieces, the gray in one direction, the black in the other.

I was a 1/4 through the gray lines I started with when I realized that it was an ambitious idea to sew lines 1/2" apart. It took about four times as long to quilt as it did to piece!

It took me a few days to catch my breath after quilting before I could face trimming the threads on the back. The nice thing about a spiral quilting is that you only have one thread to clip on the back. This one had...more.

As I was clipping, I was thinking about the work Mrs. Knoch does with the kids at our school. How she helps them when they are overwhelmed. How she teaches them techniques to persevere and find success. I thought about my son and how hard he has worked to do the hard things. How proud I am of him for pushing through his fears and frustrations, for the confident, happy, brave boy he is. How grateful I am that he is in this school with teachers who get him, and a counselor he adores. And before I knew it, I was done!

As always, D is the first to sleep with one of my quilts. He has done it since he was four and I made my first quilt, for him. It's how he adds his love to my quilts. 

I looked forward to taking a finished picture of this quilt because you don't see the illusion while you are working on it, and definitely not while quilting it. But when you step away from it....

...you get four-footed photo bombers. 

When I emailed the school to find the best time for D and I to give Mrs. Knoch her quilt, the original plan was to present it before her class. (By the way, I think every school should offer this!)

We ended up finding her in the hallway before class so we gave it to her there. It made my heart sing that before she even saw it she said, "I love it already!" 

To see more pictures of the making of this quilt, check out #KnochWalkQuilt on Instagram. To see what I'm currently working on, follow me on at deJongDreamHouse.

Linked to:
2018 Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival @ Amy's Creative Side
BOMs Away @ What a Hoot Quilts
Color Inspiration & Linky Party @ Clever Chameleon
Design Wall Monday @ Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Finished or Not Friday @ Busy Hands Quilts
Let's Bee Social @ Sew Fresh Quilts
Linky Tuesday @ Free Motion by the River
Main Crush Monday @ Cooking Up Quilts
Monday Making @ Love Laugh Quilt
Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication
Needle & Thread Thursday @ My Quilt Infatuation
Oh Scrap! @ Quilting is More Fun than Housework
Off the Wall Friday @ Nina Marie
Scrap Happy Saturday @ Super Scrappy
Show Off Saturday @ Sew Can She
UFO Busting @ Madd Quilter
Wednesday Wait Loss @ The Inquiring Quilter
What I Made Monday @ Pretty Piney
Whoop Whoop Friday @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict
WIP Linky Party @ Silly Mama Quilts
WIPS on Wednesday @ Esther's Blog

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