Julie Quilt

The day after Thanksgiving we went to a lovely party at our friend Jim's house.  Jim and his friends are great cooks and they served the most delicious turkey gumbo.  We really have a lot of fun with these folks and it was a good party.

Well - here is where this story winds its way to quilting and being posted on this blog.....

After copious amounts of wine and laughter and music - we decided that it would be fun to do a group art project.  Betsy passed around large pieces of paper and pencils and played some music and we each drew marks and shapes that were inspired by the music. Betsy is an Art Teacher and I wish that I could be in one of her classes - she has GREAT ideas!!

Then, when the music stopped, the person with the drawing had to look at it and see if they could find a picture within the drawing.  Mine turned out not so good.  Some of the others were fun to see.  But the one that I just LOVED was the one that Julie made.  It was such a charming creature and I fell in love as soon as I saw it.  I asked if I could make it into a quilt - and Julie said OK.

This is a photo of the original drawing (size  14" x 17" ).

An interesting note:  Julie, in addition to her regular job, is also an artist and had shown me two of her paintings at Jim's house.  Both charming and very colorful.  But she has never seen my art - so I think she was very brave to let me have her drawing.

So the next day I crept into the studio where I had placed the drawing after the party - hoping that I would still find it absolutely charming even when I was completely sober.  And of course I did.

I had a great time making the quilt.  It is the exact size of the original drawing.  Of course I had complete freedom to add color since it had none to start with.  The first draft colorwise had a green face - but that was really ugly and sort of scary looking.  You can see from this photo that before the stitching, it was really hard to distinguish the face from the background.

Here is the piece with the initial stitching done - looks a LOT better.
















And here is the quilt - all done and ready to give to Julie.  Here is a secret:  I love love love this quilt and it will be hard to send it on its way.  But isn't that just the greatest compliment to a quilt?  That you love it when it is done?     barbara