Happy Fathers Day.
I have done some slow stitching this week, but in honor of Father's Day I want to share the quilt I made for my Dad for his 75th birthday. Well, the top was done by his 75th, it took me another year to get it hand quilted. He is now 91, so it's been a few years. I took this picture the day I delivered it to him and my nieces Hannah and Abby were with him. Lots of things have changed since then, those girls have grown up! I did get to talk to my Dad on the phone today but it was hard not to be able to go spend time with him. The Covid virus has been so disruptive, and worse than disruptive for so many.
The quilt is a paper pieced kaleidoscope in blue and white. The pattern came from Paper Piecing with Alex Anderson. Her pattern was for 4" blocks but my husband Dan enlarged the pattern to 6" for me. As with most of my quilts I didn't start this one with a specific plan, except for the colors. I gathered fabrics along the way, from local quilt shops and shops we visited while we were on vacation. Finding fabrics was a challenge, I wound up with quite a few medium tone prints that just didn't work in the quilt because there wasn't enough contrast. It was a bit of a stash builder that way.
Here it is on my bed all basted and ready to quilt. I quilted it on my Q Snap frame, doing simple stitch in the ditch, but gave up on the hand stitching when I finally got out to the border and did piano key stitching on my machine to finish it. I'm sorry I can't find a picture of it all finished. I know I had one, and spent a good part of the morning looking for it but can't find it. Well that was a long time ago and I've not hand quilted much since then. I have begun quilting a queen size log cabin quilt but it's in my closet now waiting for me to get it back on the frame and get on with it, but it's for me so it can wait.
I did a little applique this week. I'm not very good at hand turn applique and not much practiced at any other form of applique, so don't do much of it. I'd much rather piece, but sometimes applique is the way to go. I appliqued this yellow heart to that pale pink background fabric but there isn't enough contrast and I will be blanket stitching around the edges of the heart with a deep pink embroidery thread. That was the hand stitching I had in mind for today, but when I went to my thread stash last night to find some thread I found I didn't have enough of any one thread in the right tone to help the heart stand out from the background. So that will have to wait too, at least until I can get my hands on some more thread. It's not a high priority piece right now so that's okay. I do have other things that I could be hand stitching today and maybe that's what I'll do this evening. There is a story for this little quilt too, so if I haven't worn you out writing about the quilt for my Dad you can read about this quilt in yesterday's post In the Pink.
Follow the link on over there and you can see lots of great projects that others are working on too.
Be safe and stay well. Thanks for reading!
The quilt is a paper pieced kaleidoscope in blue and white. The pattern came from Paper Piecing with Alex Anderson. Her pattern was for 4" blocks but my husband Dan enlarged the pattern to 6" for me. As with most of my quilts I didn't start this one with a specific plan, except for the colors. I gathered fabrics along the way, from local quilt shops and shops we visited while we were on vacation. Finding fabrics was a challenge, I wound up with quite a few medium tone prints that just didn't work in the quilt because there wasn't enough contrast. It was a bit of a stash builder that way. 
1 comment:
I bet your dad was happy to hear voice and have a quilt that you made. I no longer have my parents so always envious when someone gets to spend time with theirs - although as old as mine would be now they would be having a hard time with isolation
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