A gift inspired by a gift, gifted!

 my BFF gave me a book

with lots of little pictures and sayings and stuff about being friends.

I loved the little characters with the wild hair.

Immediately I thought there is something I can do based on this.

Thoughts do not always lead to making a start. Indeed I might not have got much further but I recalled some pre cut squares, bright bold patterned squares. With dots and checks and hearts and stars and they made me think of the dresses in this book. The drawings are all black and white but with such joy and movement they expressed colour.

I recall as a child watching Come Dancing with my grandmother in black and white, how she loved the brightly coloured clothes of her imagination. Indeed once it was "in colour" she was disappointed, the dresses in her mind had been much better. Ah but I digress, so back to the project.

Firstly I traced the characters and words that appealed, then transferred them onto material as black outlines using T-shirt pens.

Then tried to sort out how they would interact with the coloured squares.

There were various attempts at layouts and snaps with the digital camera. 

Before I thought I had it right and could move on to adding colour to the character squares. 

I tried to keep to colours that my BFF and I like and those reflecting the coloured squares. It was fun working out which bits to colour and which to leave alone. Fun and an endeavour to stick to less is more and not colour everything.

I was particularly pleased with the way the checked sections came out. I wondered which were me and which were Roni, and if she would see it the same way.

Shopping from the loft stash I was sure I had some purple, a darker toned to the red side of purple, I did and that would be the sashing on the top.

There was a little rearranging of the patch order. I wanted some squares in very specific places. The same but different in the middle for example.  And I wanted to space out the squares with two figures and the ones with one.

Bright pink for the binding to pick up some of that from the squares and colours on the characters.

(Grace did such a good job taking a picture of her quilt I got her to help me take a picture of this one)

The backing was light pink and then I thought about the quilting.  Stars , hearts and circles in the patterned squares, by hand.  Down the sides of the purple stripes by machine, then some cascades of hearts, again by hand in the purple sashing.

I added the label under the binding, quilted under it then stitched the label down. The label references the theme and the inspirational source.

Once finished I was very happy with the way the ides had translated into the finished quilt.

However, it was also very frustrating as destined to be a gift for my BFF I could not immediately discuss my delight with her.

We had scheduled our Christmas get together for 10th of December, Christmas before the actual day and in the same year even, wow! Sadly that was not to be due to on going issues for us both. We did however manage it on 30th. Roni kindly made the trip to mine as family circumstances are such that any long time away from home is not advisable.

I opened the door, we looked at each other and laughed, as I was wearing her favourite purple and she, my favourite teal! 

We had a splendid relaxing visit which included amongst other things a viewing of The Muppets Christmas Carol and tea from the Chip shop and a tech assist as I forgot how to make my selfie-stick work.

Although there is still a certain knack to using it at arms length.

And having got it working here we are using its tripod function and feeling very pleased with ourselves.

Oh and all except two of those trophies (which are mine from the local show) are my Dad's from his bowling and there are more in the loft.

So many thanks to the original author of the book and of the drawings.

And for my last post of the year, well there still has to be a Forestella link.

I am pleased to have been able to gift it at last, but I will also sort of miss it. Well till I get immersed in another quilting project perhaps.

I am not sure when that might be. Those other issues are not conductive to the quilting, and it may be the other more pick up and put down, quieter and portable crafts that I use as comfort, therapy and distraction going forward for some time.