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 !!