Sunny View Quilt
Over the past several months Sunny View Foundation and Life Enrichment worked together with Front Porch Gallery to cultivate engagement throughout the community in the form of a collaborative ‘mixed media’ quilt. Resident’s (and some staff members) who were interested received a blank fabric square, any requested materials, and a few allotment guidelines then were ‘turned loose’ to create whatever they wanted on the square. We were careful not to choose a theme or color scheme, though many asked, because we really wanted these squares to be as diverse as the people participating in this project.
As we moved onto the next phase of this project, we were overjoyed by the beauty of the finished squares and thrilled to see the diversity in craft; every piece was so unique and absolutely perfectly made, just like each Sunny View resident! We received over 60 submissions from West, Care Center, Summer House and Residential alike; this truly is a community project. The squares were put in the capable hands of Padma Chari. Padma is a member of the Cupertino Rotary’s and, thankfully, has some experience in making a quilt like ours. She shared this sweet story, erasing any doubt that she is the perfect person to forge our squares into a beautiful quilt. Padma had friends and family together for a cultural holiday in which they do a lot of singing. Some of the ladies didn’t feel comfortable singing, but wanted to participate so Padma gave them a square of fabric with instruction (very much like the parameters of the squares for Sunny View) to create on. She then collected the squares and sewed them together into a quilt. Now every year, when they come together for the holiday, each lady sees her square and feels like a greater part of the celebration! Hopefully, our quilt will evoke similar feelings of community and engagement for everyone at Front Porch as the quilt travels throughout the communities.
The quilt was unveiled at the Art Show, November 5th to rave reviews. Our staff and residents are truly blessed to have such a wonderful collaborative piece to go out into the world.
Special thanks to Maggie Timeus, Lee Matas, and Joy Winsor for helping to hammer out logistic and fabric details.
Contributors:
Joy Winsor Maggie Timius Letha Matus
Jackie Gavin Katherine Peebles Pat Siefert
Ruth Gray Vanessa Bustamonte Melissa Davie
Danielle Gregg Lyn-Ann Pizarek Eleanor Incerpi
ChingYun Lin Shu Zh Wang Tingan Shi
Vijay Kirtane Yuying Gong Ping-Kwang Chen
Rosa Lee Hui Qin Wang Safa Farhad
Ruth Ann Green Pesha Edwards Wilma Smith
Jeanne Molay Elfrieda Tenorio Maxine Chisholm
Yvonne Hardman Ellie Squire
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