A Quilter's Elegy for Joanne S.

We lost our friend Joanne S. last week, one of our beloved Brown Bag quilters. Joanne had been ill for a while, but she never complained, and we were grateful that she was able to rally her strength and attend a quilt weekend with us last November. She had been in hospice care for the last few months so most of us were able to spend time with her and say goodbye.

Joanne was an extremely talented quilter. She was a perfectionist who devoted herself to one project at a time, completing beautiful quilts with laser-like focus and precision. She had a great eye for color and she quilted all of her quilts on her Bernina and her Juki sewing machines. We will all miss her very much. She shared her love of quilting with her great niece Emma. We always had so much fun when Joanne would bring Emma to our meetings.

Here are some of Joanne's beautiful quilts that have graced my blog.

This is a quilt that we all made together for Emma.

This colorful Many Trips Around the World was one of my favorite quilts that Joanne made. There is a full size shot of it further below.

A shot from several years ago when Emma first started coming to quilting with Joanne.

This was a block of the month kit.

Lots of Christmas table runners all given as gifts.

Our road trip to The Missouri Star Quilt Company a couple of years ago.

This quilt has many, many tiny pieces!

Joanne made this in a workshop with Kaffe Fassett.

Many Trips Around the World.

One of Joanne's finished Birthday Block quilts.

Queen size Double Wedding Ring Quilt

This was the year that Emma volunteered Auntie Joanne to make 9 quilts for Emma to give as Christmas gifts to her cousins. Joanne finished them all and then taught Emma to sew!

In addition to being a quilter, Jo had a long and distinguished nursing career. She was a devoted sister, aunt, great aunt and friend. She had a great sense of humor. She loved to travel and visited many different foreign countries and exotic places with her dear friend Nancy D., another Brown Bag quilter and fellow nurse.

If you see some extra puffy clouds in the sky, it is Joanne doing trapunto and machine quilting in heaven. 

Thanks for visiting.

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy