Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Toe Away Quilt

Toe Away Quilt


I'm part of an online community of quilters who celebrate each other's joys and support each other in times of need.  One such need happened in the Spring of 2015, when Melissa's husband, Tyler, was involved in a gruesome workplace accident, resulting in the impending loss of a toe.  They had a good sense of humor about it, and even posted about having a "toe away party."  A quilt idea was born!

  Kimberly reached out to a few of us about this idea and we quickly came up with some block submission ideas:   Using bruised colors, Black , Blue, Green, Purple, create a 10" block that is toe or foot themed.   We also asked for 9-patch blocks to be used as setting squares, since Tyler would have only 9 toes.

In typical 'snowflake' fashion, the FB messenger chat was very active with folks posting photos of their quickly done blocks and all-in-good-fun insults about our different sewing styles and preferences  (hand done, fussy cut, funny puns).  Kimberly, the queen of memes, create this gem, 

and then the blocks started arriving in the mail.

Toe Jam
Foot Print, missing toes
  
Twinkle Toes
Toe Truck

Big Foot crossing
Bear paw, missing a toe



Bruised, bloody foot Print

foot print truck





Kimberly came to Brooklyn to sew these amazing blocks together, with more 'bruise' colored fabric:
At some point, we learned that Tyler would lose half of another toe, so he would have only 8 1/2 toes,  so every 9-patch block was 'edited' to be 8 1/2 blocks: 


And Kimberly created this very special block: 

Here is the pieced top, which we then mailed out to Janet in CA for quilting.
  

Megan's block arrived a little late to be included in the top, but I used it for the label:
Little Foot
The quilt then went to Flaun for binding,  and sewing on the label, then finally was shipped to Melissa and Tyler in September 2015.

Lots of love there!

Peace





Saturday, September 5, 2015

Aaron and Sarah's Wedding Quilt

Our cousins Aaron and Sarah were married in 2015.  They enjoy watching Doctor Who together, so I decided to surprise them with this themed quilt:


The center image was made using a pattern by Hunter's Design Studio - Relatively DimensionalThe border includes some Doctor Who fabric from Spoonflower, and then some special embroidered bits. 

One corner has this image:    Which translates to "Aaron and Sarah" in Gallifreyan, the language of Doctor Who.    I used an online translator to generate the image, then I embroidered it.  


Another corner includes Aaron and Sarah's names, and also a famous saying from Doctor Who:  "a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff"



The back includes rows of left over blocks and fabric.
  Here we are unveiling the quilt top - it took me a few extra months to finish the quilting.



I've long been connected with "little" cousin Aaron.  He was a very smart little boy, very interested in math and science concepts, and I always enjoyed interacting with him at family reunions.  As young adult we talked about programming, because I was also a programmer.  (He has since far surpassed my math, science and programming knowledge!)

Now as a grown up man, he found a likewise very smart and wonderful woman to love.  Sarah is sweet and warm with my cousin Aaron, she's a great addition to our extended family and I adore them both.
The word of the day!   Photo by Nicki Fietzer

Here's to a long and wonderful marriage, you love birds!

Peace.