Love Letters

My husband is the best when it comes to my quilting addiction. He is supportive and interested, he surprises me with fabric when he travels for work and gets me gifts that would seem completely unromantic (a new ironing board!) to a non-quilter.

For his birthday I wanted to make him his own quilt (I totally hog the Kitchen Window one on our couch), but it had to be very very special and very very secret. I started right after Christmas paper piecing some song lyrics. And then it snowed. And snowed again. And he was always home. And I had to downgrade the gift to just a panel. But it’s a doozy:

Image

It’s a lyric from “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And yes, I know the song is about a woman who is trying to keep her man from leaving, but it’s also a song that my husband and I have liked and listened to for almost as long as we’ve known each other. Taken out of context on a quilt it does exactly what I hoped– lets him know that our love is special.

It took about 12 stolen, completely secret hours to piece all the letters. A huge thank you to Beth at Rock Paper Scissors who let me use the work room there when I needed to get away from my daily distractions. Part of the gift was that I kept it completely secret– there weren’t even any pictures of the progress, just in case he checked Instagram or happened to use my phone. I cleaned my work area after every sessions and disposed of all the tiny black and white trimmings. I’m terrible at keeping secrets, and this one was really hard, but I did it!

I used Diane Bohn’s pattern “My First Alphabet.” It’s so easy to make gorgeous letters, but seriously, these tiny triangles on the Os are not my friends (each letter is three inches tall).

Image

Here is the most important part of the panel with the rest of the fabric I’m hoping to use. It includes two of the fabrics that he bought in Japan, and I might throw a few pops of color in there for good measure. But I love those texty prints, and I’ve been saving my black and white fabrics for something special. This definitely qualifies.

Image

I hope you get to spend the day with someone special.

Category : blocks, fabric, quilting process, quilts