Monday, August 8, 2011

From Alice: My Three Boys Quilt #2 Finally Finished!

I think I posted about the first quilt I made based on a photo taken five years ago of our three grandsons.  With my youngest daughter having a major birthday this summer, I thought that a second quilt based on that photo would be a super present for her.  So all during July I have been working on this quilt.  It's official name is LAKE MICHIGAN BEACH BOYS.  Our entire family was celebrating our son's birthday five years ago at a wonderful old house on Lake Michigan.

I quilted the first version myself, but Judy of our MM group quilted this one for me. (She quilts for compensation in her "spare" time!!!)   I was running short of time myself, since I am also making a traditional quilt for my oldest sister, to be presented to her this Saturday at a family reunion!  Judy did her typical super good job!

So here's the photo on which the two quilts were based:

The birthday daughter's boys are at the left; they were 2 1/2 and nearly 5;
our oldest daughter's son is the little boy on the right, who turned
three while we were at Lake Michigan.
And here's the quilt.  It measures 38" x 36.5".
I painted the fabric for the sky, the water, and the beach
section closest to the lake.  The other two parts
of the beach were constructed of commercial fabrics.
The one at the bottom is named, appropriately,
'"sand."

3 comments:

  1. Wonderful, Alice. I've watched as you have shown us its development, and now it is FINISHED. Congratulations. It looks GREAT. ss

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful quilt! I wish I could see it larger or in person! How were the legs, chests and faces quilted? That's what always stumps me when I do portrait quilts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the kind remarks! You know, Barbara, I opted out of quilting anywhere on the little boys' bodies. I sort of wish now, though, that I had quilted--or had had Judy quilt--their clothing, at least. I don't like quilting on faces or bodies. To me, that makes skin looked wrinkled! On the quilt that I made for myself, I might go back and add some quilting to the clothing. If that works out well, then I can add some to this quilt for my daughter. But I will leave the bodies and faces alone. That makes them sort of pop out from the background. On my quilt and when I discussed the quilting on this one with Judy, I wanted rather minimal quilting in the background, to help the quilts hang straight despite the no-no of uneven quilting. We'll see how that works; I am making hanging sleeves today and will hang my own quilt! You know that you can click on images on the blog to make the image bigger.

    ReplyDelete