My turn to get choked up...

This is too lovely not to share, although I'll use pseudonyms since it's a public journal...

Dearest Fionn and DH

First of all my belated holiday wishes to you both.

Fionn, thank you so much for the beautiful quilt which you made for me and grandpa. I put it on him and showed the 2 nurses (1 day nurse and 1 night nurse). They both haven't seen anything so beautifully sewed. Including myself. Soo beautiful. I thanked your mother-in-law [hee hee, this is her daughter] for the pictures she supplied you. I thank both of you soo very much.

Whenever somebody comes to visit papa and me I take it out the quilt to show them. I am soo proud of you, DH, J., and S. I shall cherish it with love from you guys. Thank you. I love you all.

Mahalo!
Grandma and Grandpa

P.S Thank you and go out to kau-kau (eat) [referring to a check she enclosed]

And delivered!

We shipped via FedEx, for no particularly good reason. One positive thing about FedEx (other than the knowledge that, after handing over your box, your wallet will no longer be cluttered with pesky dollar bills :-P ) is that they have an excellent online tracking system. I did relish having access to that information this weekend, to see the quilt make its way across the country; but I especially loved knowing, within 9 minutes of the actual delivery, that it had been delivered straight into Grandma's hands.

When I saw this, I IM'ed DH and he called his parents to give them a heads up. Not long after, his mother called me and relayed the following:

She had called Grandma within 19 minutes of the delivery, thinking that this would surely be enough time for her to open the package, read the note, unwrap the quilt, etc. (Even accounting for my overzealous application of packing tape, this sounded like sufficient time to me as well.)

But after she had signed for the box, she had gone to see to Grandpa. And so, when MIL had called, she had only just gotten out the quilt - and was crying with joy when she came to the phone.

Aw, I think she liked it! :) (What better reaction could you ask for? :))

Really done

Done, note written, everything packed up with foam and packing peanuts and due to be mailed tomorrow. Yay!

The diagonal quilting isn't all that obvious, but if you are curious, I mocked it up (the pale yellow lines) here. The ditch stitching (=quilting in the seam line) isn't supposed to be visible, so the fact that it isn't is a good thing ;)

You know, it's funny... going in, I was kind of dreading doing the ditch stitching, as even little inaccuracies are so obvious. But with all of the ditch stitching I needed to do on this quilt (around each of the photos, between the body of the quilt and the first border, between the grey and brown borders), I started to get fairly comfortable with it. So I am now kind of looking forward to the idea of doing more going forward!

Not quite...

About an inch of one of the quilting threads broke. I saw this suspicious spot when I was doing the binding; and, indeed, that's exactly where it is. It's easy to fix: I can pick out a few inches of stitches in either direction and just stitch that one line. (I'm glad it popped now rather than later as I'm quilting with variegated thread and that'd be hard to reproduce.)

Since I'm already messing with it, I may want to stitch around the photos a bit to stabilize things a bit more. I'll assess in the daylight...

Done?

Current location of grandparents' quilt:



There is no reason this should be a disaster, as I've washed all the fabrics (and even the batting) several times. But please keep your fingers crossed anyway!

Grandparents' photo quilt (top)

DH said the quilt should be blue and brown, sort of a traditional Japanese color scheme, and masculine because it's intended to be used by his grandfather, and so it is. There are two special fabrics that I wanted to call out.

1) The ecru fabric (third from the left in the link) is the only fabric here that was actually made in Japan. It's part of the popular Daiwabo line which is based on antique Japanese prints. I wanted to use it for this reason and because (with pale blue and taupe leaves and amber-brown dots, it married the brown and blues in the quilt). The stripe in the narrow middle border and the backing were chosen to coordinate with this fabric so it wouldn't stick out too badly!

2) The deep brown border is a sunprint batik with little leaves and twigs on it. It's absolutely beautiful, and it had to be washed about 10 times before the wash water stopped leaking dye. There is a close-up here, only the color in the piece I have is ruddier, not so olive. You currently see the brown as 5 3/4"; after I sandwich the quilt, everything will get squared/trimmed up and the (black) binding will be added, so it'll end up 5" wide (same as the blocks in the body of the quilt).

Click the photo to see the larger version.

Photos for a photo quilt

Photos for the grandparents' photo quilt have been transferred - and our printer only munched up one sheet of the specially prepared fabric!

Now I have to let them sit for 24-48 hours to "cure."

Value judgments

DH has given me a little input on the sorts of colors and values I should be using in the photo quilt for the grandparents-in-law. This is group of potential fabrics we're considering - blues, browns, and neutrals that are generally medium to light in value. (I think he would rather that I not include the two darks on the right end at all, but I should be able to convince him with the ruby beholder.)

The photos scanned and printed on fabric will for the most part also be medium to light in value. That means you have a very low contrast quilt, so you need to look for a pattern where the blocks can be similar in value, rather than one that only works if there is significant value contrast. Like the snowball pattern. (uh oh)

Look at the examples here. In the ones with high contrast, where the snowball is significantly lighter or significantly darker than the surrounding squares, it stands out nicely and gives a nice crisp look. In the ones with low contrast, the pattern becomes a big muddle of slush.

I think this means we go back to the drawing board on the pattern here. :-S