One of the best ways I know to tell friends I love them is to make them a quilt. On a less altruistic level, giving quilts to others means I don't have a house taken over by them!
When I make a quilt for a friend, I often think about it for weeks or even months - what colours and prints to use mostly. The actual arrangement of the patches is not as important to me as the fabrics and colour. I just worked that out, cool!!
Ever since Lonely Heart, I have wanted to make Emma and Michael a quilt.
Emma and Michael at the piano during Lonely Heart rehearsals.
I love these guys so much and I know they would appreciate a bold colour scheme and a bit of tongue in cheek fabric choice.The fabrics all have meaning specific to Emma and Michael. This is a couple who are a musical director with a passion for movies, and an actor with a love of clothes who also writes scripts. Both love their family and friends and each other dearly. I wanted to capture all of these ideas.
These two 20" blocks are alternated and rotated.
I love how the red, black and white with a hint of gold works so well together. Auditioning* a quilt online** is quite tricky as the colours and scales of print are so hard to judge. However, I find that colour schemes like red and black are safest to do, as they are fairly fail safe.
I also love this really simple pattern with its big 9x9 and 9x12 and 3x20 pieces as they really show off the fabrics, and these fabrics all need to have a few lines and a walk in part, or there would be a lot of sulking!
Next time, putting it together. :)
*Auditioning a quilt is the process of selecting which fabrics to include and which not. Much like a play audition! I may have to blog about this concept some other time...
**I only buy fabrics offshore that I cannot source here in the local shops. If we don't support them, we will lose them!
How lovely and what a great friend you are. A gift that you have spent so much time, energy and passion on is much better than a gift you have purchased.
ReplyDeleteSo they chose the fabrics, or you chose them for them?
ReplyDeleteOh, I chose it! I don't make quilts when people choose the fabric, as it rarely works. Maybe one key fabric that I can work from. But mostly, and most of the quilters I know think this too, we have to enjoy it, as it is a huge job to make one and expensive, and the pleasure is in selecting the fabrics and arranging them, so just making up a quilt someone else chose, is only getting to do the boring bits heehe.
Delete