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!