In the Anniversary Quilt, we help clients contact and gather greetings and memories from friends and family. Muslin squares are sent out, completed squares returned. From these squares we design and transform the completed individual squares into a celebration quilt ready for presentation on a special occasion. This type of quilt can also celebrate a wedding, a bridal shower or a birthday.

Our Memorial Quilt stitches scraps and pieces of a loved ones clothing into a quilt celebrating his or her life. A memory quilt can include all types of clothing including suits, ties, shirts, skirts, uniforms, an apron pocket, even a wedding dress or hair ribbons. Photos and text can also be transferred to fabric and included. Your finished quilt will allow you to wrap yourself in warm memory. Looking at and feeling the fabric of memory can help us through the rough days of grieving our loved ones.

Recent Press About Celebration Quilters:

Faith @ Work Magazine
Spring 2007
(Link to Article)

Wrapped in Memories
by Sara Goodman
Each square tells a story within six small inches of fabric. One, the work of a granddaughter, is made up of many slivers of greens, blues and browns, creating a picture of willowy reeds alongside a lake. Another is an old black and white photograph of a bride and groom on their wedding day. Still another is an oil painting on canvas of blue waves breaking on the yellow sand. There is a square with cutout figures, a family of six holding hands on a cream background. There are 81 pieces stitched together and set against a blueberry background, each one designed out of love for two people celebrating their life together.

It is an Anniversary quilt, celebrating a couple’s 50 years together. Their daughter, Janice Bjorkman, the artist and designer, has always loved to quilt. The dream began over lunch with her daughter Katie a year or so before her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. “We wanted to make a quilt to honor “Gram and Pops” and the many ways their love had touched so many lives.” The quilt would be a surprise, and before lunch was over, the quilt was sketched out on the restaurant’s butcher paper tablecloth. All in all, the project involved 75 people contributing squares of their own design, which Janice pieced together. The quilt now hangs in her parents’ home, giving daily glimpses of friendships, family, and cherished memory.

Celebration Quilters

After the tragedy of 9-11 in 2001, Janice felt compelled to offer her services to make memorial quilts. In 2005, she found the vehicle to communicate to bereaved families as she grieved the loss of her own niece, Brita Marie Johnson. Janice’s new business, Celebration Quilters, was born. Brita’s mother Judy, has joined in the business. Together, they provide a deep level of sensitivity and compassion to others struggling with loss. A Memorial Quilt honors a loved one by using his or her clothing as the quilt’s building blocks. Quilts made by the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective, and featured in a new postage stamp, were another inspiration for starting the business. In the farming community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, women take clothing too worn out to wear in the fields, and transform it into beautiful quilts. Janice says, “I love the idea of recycling clothes that people have worn and using them in a new creation. Each piece of fabric and clothing has its own characteristic design and texture. It’s like a puzzle to fit the pieces together.” Her latest quilt was for a young woman who lost her father to pancreatic cancer. It included his t-shirts, corduroy trousers, flannel shirts, denim overalls, as well as his childhood bathrobe and a few silk ties. There is a lot of back-and-forth conversation with her clients to determine the direction the quilt will take, and to remain true to the spirit of the person being remembered.

T-shirt quilts are another option for preserving memories and celebrating achievements. A quilt currently in production celebrates the childhood of a college-bound young man. He can include this “piece of home” as he packs his bags and leaves to face the challenges of college life.

Janice has owned and operated another business, The Music Connection, for the past 15 years. The Music Connection provides music for weddings and other special occasions. She is also principal flutist for the Milwaukee Ballet and is a substitute in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. “Music and quilting are connected in a way,” Janice says. “They each uniquely enhance life experiences, making both the living and the remembering all the richer.”

International Cemetery and Funeral Association (ICFA)
April 2007
(Link to Article)

Celebration Quilters Offers Custom-Designed Memorial Quilts

Celebration Quilters creates custom handmade quilts celebrating special occasions including anniversaries, weddings, births, birthdays, graduations and keepsakes of fraternities, sororities, college affiliations and hobbies and in celebration of the memory of a loved one. They have experience in all aspects of quilting from design through all stages of quilt construction.

Artist and designer Janice Bjorkman founded Celebration Quilters in 2005 as a way to offer comfort to bereaved families. There are several options for families wishing to custom design a quilt:

• The memorial quilt stitches scraps and pieces of a loved one's clothing into a quilt celebrating his or her life. It can include all types of clothing including suits, ties, shirts, skirts, uniforms, an apron pocket, even a wedding dress or hair ribbons. Photos and text can also be transferred to fabric and included. The quilts offer a way for people to wrap themselves in warm memory and help them through the grieving process.
• The Random Square and Cotton Mix quilts are perfect for the special clothing people have saved and don't know what to do with. Whether it is a few pieces or many, Celebration Quilters can add fabric to complement the treasured garments and fabric.
• T-shirt quilts are another option for preserving memories and celebrating achievements. A quilt currently in production celebrates the childhood of a college-bound young man. He can include this "piece of home" as he packs his bags and leaves to face the challenges of college life.
• The Anniversary Quilt allows clients to gather greetings and memories from friends and family. Muslin squares are sent out and completed squares are returned. Celebration Quilters designs and transforms the individual squares into a celebration quilt ready for presentation on a special occasion. This type of quilt can also celebrate a wedding, a bridal shower or a birthday.

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Northwest Herald
February 14, 2006
reprinted with permission

Warm Memories
by Sammi King

Gifts of love come in all varieties. There is the handwritten note. The carefully chosen card. The single long stem rose or the overpriced dozen. All say "I love you" on February fourteenth and are often forgotten by February fifteenth.

Roy Hoffman didn't forget. He saved all of the letters and cards sent over the course of fifty years. He clipped cartoons from the newspaper that he thought his wife Marieanne would enjoy. He saved pictures and mementoes in a box. Then he put them all together in a keepsake album and presented them to his wife for their fiftieth anniversary.How cool is that?

For their fiftieth anniversary the couple chose to share their happiness with their children and took their whole family on a cruise.

"We took the cruise in August and we told our kids that it was our anniversary celebration even though our anniversary wasn't until the following November," said Marieanne.

Well, sometimes those kids just have a few ideas of their own.

They surprised their parents with another anniversary party. They transformed the basement fellowship hall of the Evangelical Covenant Church into a party room, decorating each table with a photograph of the couple and a framed love letter that was sent from one to the other during the fifty years.

"Normally I don't like surprises," said Marieanne. "I don't really know how they kept it from me. Although I did see the letter they sent out with ‘sshhhhh' written across the top."

The greatest surprise of all came in the form of a gift,–a true gift of love given by the family, and their many friends.

Marieanne and Roy were taken aback when they opened the beautiful keepsake, a handmade quilt made with love from squares created by grandchildren, children, extended family and friends from across the country.

Each square tells a story. Some are embroidered, others are appliqued. There are photo transfers showing the couple on their wedding day and squares submitted by members of the wedding party. There are squares that show the couple's heritage, both German ans Swedish. There are quilt squares showing vacation memories and interests such as a book club, Marieanne's quilt club and Roy's wood carving club.

Daughter Janice, who came up with the idea, even created a square that has a paper doll look, showing the couple and their four children. Another square is an applique of the homes they lived in over the fifty years of their life together.

"My daughter and I were out to lunch and we had this idea for an anniversary quilt," said Janice. "It was a restaurant with butcher block paper on the tables. We began drawing it out on the paper. It's amazing how much the final quilt resembled that original drawing,"

At the center of the quilt are the nine grandchildren. Sadly one was tragically killed in a car accident, a year after the quilt was made. Once again, a quilt, featuring fifteen pansies, one for each year of life, was made as a remembrance of her. Each family member hand tied a knot in the quilt.

"The finished quilt allows you to wrap yourself in a warm memory," said Janice. "Looking at it and feeling the fabric of memory can help us through the rough days of grieving our loved ones."

Many family and friends were so impressed with the anniversary quilt that they encouraged Janice to do more. She and her sister, Judy, started Celebration Quilters, a home based business creating quilts for anniversaries, birthdays, memorials and college bound students. They even set up a website (www.celebrationquilters.com) to promote their talent.

The anniversary quilt is a gift given in love and received in love. Each stitch is a symbol of those cherished and those remembered.. It is a keepsake will be treasured today, tomorrow and forever.