Bonsai Quilt

Last week I wrote about a quilt I am making for D for our anniversary in July.  After writing that, I thought that it might sound like a strange gift to give a husband to some people.  Fortunately for me, D has always not only supported what I do but also appreciated what I make.  And this particular quilt focuses on something he enjoys so it makes some sense.

 

 

The eleven blocks in the photograph are the 8" squares that will make up the rest of the quilt blocks.   The circles are going to offset the strong vertical/rectangular design in a quilt that is supposed to be about nature which isn't straight and rectangular.   I only need 10 of these, but I made some extras because one never knows what will work the best until its all laid out. 

 

But the biggest surprise, I hope, for D will be the only 8" blocks I haven't shown you.  Thirteen years ago in a meeting of the bonsai club, we had a class on drawing bonsai.  We used newsprint paper, and ink.  The tools we used with which to create our drawings were skewers, matchbook covers, twigs - in short anything we could find.  We came home with our drawings and while we didn't really want to throw them away, we didn't know what to do with them.  One of us suggested putting them up in the garage, and that's where they've been ever since.

 

Our construction this summer will call for removing the garage roof, and we both lamented the loss of those drawings even though they had become quite dusty and rather the worse for wear.  I told D I would dust them off if  he would take them down for me, and I'd come up with a way to save them.  You know what I'm going to tell you, don't you?  I had them copied and re-sized to less than 8" at their biggest point, and Monday I printed them on fabric. 

 

I can hardly wait until D sees them in the quilt and recognizes what they are.