Irish Lake Quilter

......snippets and quilts, family, pets and friends....

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Christmas presents


Retirement means very little time alone - the kind of time one needs to get quilts made for your husband! I've managed to get the quilt to the point of binding, but I think he is suspicious. Oh well.....he'll just have to act surprised instead of being truly surprised.

Jim is a woodworker and loves to putter in his shop. He also likes to make wooden jigsaw puzzles - like the kind you buy at Wal-Mart only better. He takes a photo, has it enlarged, adheres it to a special piece of wood and then works his magic. His puzzles are all interlocking and can usually be picked up by one corner and the whole puzzle stays intact.

Anyway, a couple of years ago on a quilting weekend, my friends suggested I make Jim a puzzle quilt and even went so far as to buy a pattern. The pattern had squared off "bumps" and wasn't interlocking. So I designed my own and came up with a puzzle quilt for him. I don't even want to guess how much I spent searching for all kinds of novelty fabrics depicting the things that he likes.........from french fries to a muscle car to our special pup, Jordan. The bumps were all sewn on by hand and that took some evenings in the upstairs when he wasn't around.

I'm down to binding it now and hope to have it all done by Christmas. It isn't a pretty quilt at all. But it has all the things that mean something to him. I think he'll like it!

7 comments:

Carolyn said...

Judy, that has to be one of the most incredibly thoughtful gifts that I've ever heard of! He's going to love it!

Did you see I finished my Grandma's Album quilt? It's on my blog...finally! :o)

Quilter Kathy said...

This is a real treasure and a gift from the heart...he is a lucky man to receive such a wonderful quilt!

Libby said...

What a fantastic quilt . . . it's the ones where so much thought is put into each step that really shine. He's a lucky fella *s*

Saska said...

I LOVE it! I have a pattern similiar, but yours looks like so much fun...an actual puzzle.
Lucky guy!

Nancy said...

I love the puzzle quilt. Where did you find the pattern?

Nancy
Patchwork Penguin

Lindah said...

This is such a neat quilt! Good job!

Teodo said...

BUON NATALE - MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY 2008 - FELICE 2008

ciao ciao