I LOVED this theme. I was telling my husband about my planned approach while we were on a road trip headed to Wichita Falls, TX to bicycle this summer. He told me I needed to write down 10 other ideas. Within 10 minutes I had written down 22 ideas (including bicycles!) but I just had to do this one. My daughter of blessed memory used to say " My mom's favorite shape is a circle because that is how she drives". Well obviously I like circles - that is why is was so easy to think of them! I just had to this one to honor a precious memory of a precious person. She was referring to my horrible sense of direction. Whenever we went anyplace each intersection brought a 1 in 4 chance that I would head off in the right direction. We did a lot of circling around even though I had lived in the same city for most of my adult life.
This was done with very straight forward piecing of the road fabrics into a great map fabric designed by Tim Holtz in his Eclectic Elements collection. I decided to use my newest toy, a 10 needle embroidery machine, to embroider the question marks. I digitized them in 2 different software systems and ended up liking the one built in to the machine after I tested all 3. I used Sulky puffy foam behind the embroidery simply because I've owned it for years and have never used it. It gives great depth to the characters. I drew out a whimsical car and my wonderful husband edited my drawing (at my request!) to make it look more like a car. I copied my drawing to freezer paper and used it to cut out fabric attached to Pellon double sided sticky fusible. I experimented with a messy decorative stitch on the red to attach the red car and decided to finish off securing the appliques with a straight stitch. The car windows are a sheer translucent fabric. Quilting just had to be done with concentric circles. I used my walking foot on pre-chalked circles for the inner circles. The outer ones were done by using a guide on the foot against the previously stitched lines. Edges were done with facings I learned from Shelly Stokes of Cedar Canyon Textiles in an on-line ruzuku class.
Now many years later, I still seem to be going around in circles. I am lucky to have the technological augmentation of a GPS. I get lost much less often
