Wednesday 23 May 2012

Gecko Soup

Murphy's brother-in-law's law : One good thing leads to another. Blogging led me to Gecko Soup.

I started blogging...stumbled onto IMQG (India Modern Quilt Guild) on Facebook...read a post there about a workshop in Bangalore on traditional quilting...attended it for fun...met Su there, a first time quilter...she then joined IMQG and posted something about a friend of hers who wanted to get a quilt made and if anyone was interested...I volunteered as usual biting off more than I could chew...Su eventually left IMQG saying it was all geek to her (!!) but by then her quiltseeker friend Mel was already in touch with me...she wanted to gift her 18 yr old daughter a memory quilt...we threw some ideas around...and then we had ...Gecko Soup !!

May I present to you a very special quilt named...Gecko Soup! :


Mel wanted to present her daughter with a special quilt on her day of graduation. She sent me her daughter's pic and described her to me as a vivacious and fun loving youngster with a dozen dear friends. Since all the friends were going away to different placed to study, she (the mom) wanted it to be a memory quilt with a patch devoted to each friend. After considering hand prints, signatures, and other designs, we settled on giving each friend a piece of fabric and fabric pens/paints and leaving it to them to leave a memory for their friend. Super idea it turned out to be. Don't you just love these patches?







Since it was to be a surprise, and worse, exams were on for the kids, it must've been a logistical nightmare for Mel to get everything together. Hats off to her! She even picked up this adorable gecko fabric on one of her foreign jaunts to go with the plain patches. Love them geckos.

Decided to frame the blocks and go with a simple arrangement coz one, we were terribly short of time to try anything complicated, and two, I didn't have the heart to chop up the geckos any more than necessary. Quilted in the ditch zig zag lines in variegated thread and some squares to frame each patch.






And since I realized the geckos looked less like they were chopped up and more like they were playing hide and seek, I went ahead and bravely added borders. Mel said I could keep any excess fabric and believe me, I had to really fight the urge to slap on some boring fabric for the back and hide the geckos under my mattress. It was a tough fight and I'm glad good won over evil. :-)


Just folded the top over to the back and avoided the binding thus saving precious time that I didn't have in the first place. Hastily took some pics for memory's sake (mine) and sent it off to Bangalore by Express courier.


 Am happy to report that Gecko Soup reached its delighted recipient JUST in time on her graduation day. She loves it !


Cheers to all those lovely moms out there ! Geckos rule !!

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Spots and Silence

In the last couple of months, I attended a quilt meet, I made a few quilty friends (for life I'm guessing), I churned out a few quilts, I had a few blogposts in mind, and I had a shock.

I had some cute spotty fabric and just for the heck of it, posted a pic of the fabric on my facebook wall asking if anybody would like to have a baby quilt custom made. To my surprise I had four requests and after a li'l thought, decided to make it for a friend's one and a half year old baby girl.



I whipped up this quilt in a week's time for this adorable child over whom the parents are understandably 'Totally Dotty'. The father came to pick up the quilt and as per his wishes I embroidered a couple of hearts and the nick name by which he called his child. He took it happily that evening. And the next morning he was dead :-(.

His heart had given out. A strapping young heart surgeon and his heart had betrayed him. My quilt was probably the last thing he gave his daughter..the last symbol of his love. And I have been so shaken by this that I have not dared to go anywhere near my sewing machine or even talk or blog about quilting :-(.

Now, as I gather my courage and send out yet another prayer for his family, the best I can do is post pics of the quilt which has so much of love bundled up within it. A quilt named 'Totally Dotty'.












Peace be with all.

Friday 11 May 2012

Inquiring minds want to know

Life happens. Shit happens. Usually pretty simultaneously. Plenty of both happened over the last month. My last blogpost was more than a month ago and the next one would probably have been more than a month later if I hadn't been shaken awake today by the sweetest of reprimands from blogland. Got an email that went..

Subject line : Hey! I've missed you!

Tina,

I know everyone gets busy, but I've been patiently waiting for another installment on your blog.  I want to see what you have been up to, including your monthly challenges! 

No pressure, but inquiring minds want to know!!

Hope all is well with you!!!

Jen 


Jen, if I could give you a hug across the seven seas, I would ! Thanks for bringing me back :-)

Anyways, as I was saying (a month and a half ago), the India Modern Quilt Guild (IMQG) had its first ever meet and being the correspondent, I dutifully reported the goings-on in a three-part blogpost on the IMQG blog. No point doing it again here, so I'm just gonna give the links here and do hope you folks will hop over and take a look at what we've been up to.

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/everybodys-invited.html

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/imqg-meet-blast-off.html

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/imqg-meet-and-so-we-sew.html


Cheers to inquiring minds!! Love them ! :-)