Made by TMQG Members
QuiltCon 2016
Misssion San Xavier del Bac
The challenge was to go off grid. Someone pulled up an image of San Xavier Mission at sunset (Mission San Xavier Del Bac, Tucson; by Richard Cummins/LPI). The Mission was established in 1692 and the current building dates to the 1780s. A thunderstorm had created a large puddle in front of the Mission that reflected one of our spectacular sunsets.
We had an image and a layout so we set to work selecting fabrics in the prescribed color palette. Our quilt shop, The Quilt Basket, had a variety of shot cottons and prints that worked for us. We purchased 13 fabrics and distributed them among the members with guidelines for cutting the fabrics into squares and rectangles. We added some white fabric later.
At our next meeting we began laying out the fabric on a twin sheet marked with a diagonal grid. We wanted to represent the Mission as well as the sunset in the sky and its reflection in the water. We
even sneaked in an abstract saguaro cactus. Can you find it?
Kristi volunteered to quilt it over her holiday vacation. We suggested that she quilt parallel lines,
figuring it would be challenging but straightforward. But the quilt had developed a personality by this
time and demanded that there should be several different sets of parallel lines to set off the design
and that each color needed its own quilting treatment. Thirty hours of quilting ensued to make this
quilt spectacular. The quilt even made a trip to Mission San Xavier for a photo shoot on a very windy
day.
