the quilt has been delivered

Once I finish a quilt I am ready to  clean up the sewing room, put away the scraps, clean and oil my machine, and get started on a new project.  

Here is the recipient of my last quilt, my sister's husband, Don.   They are a great couple and are always finding fun things to do from cruising to motorcycles to camping to building and piloting their own plane.

I have made quilts for all my immediate family members over the years and I wanted to include one for Don as well.

I really had to put my thinking cap on to figure out what design to use for his quilt.  I knew I didn't want to make a "grandmaw" looking quilt, but something more modern instead.

I searched Pinterest for "man quilts" and I found this pattern called "Gentleman's Agreement".

I ordered the pattern but wanted brighter fabrics (Don likes things colorful).

I ordered these fabrics...ombre blue and yellow and the bubbly looking one for the background.

When the fabric arrived, I realized it wouldn't work for the pattern.  It requires the shading of the fabric to graduate from dark to light to dark again...and these only went from dark to light.

I couldn't find any appropiate fabric in colors I wanted so I scrapped that idea.

But I did use a lot of the blue and yellow in the final quilt.

Next I saw this pattern below online and thought it would be a good quilt for Don.  He is also a helicopter pilot so I pictured the arrows pointing up, down, and sideways being like a simplified toggle stick in a helicopter...although I'm quite certain there's a lot more to flying a helicopter!

I ordered yards of yellow fabric for the background and planned on the arrows being bright primary colors...then I decided this quilt would look too childish, and I scrapped that idea.

But, I did use up nearly all that fabric for the back of the final quilt. (That strip in the photo is all that was leftover.)

I considered a quilt using this"Magic Squares" pattern, which I already had, but I doubted that the 3D effect would look as good if I used brighter colors.

I was starting to feel hopeless about finding the right thing...then, at the Paducah Quilt Show in April, I saw the sample quilt that the quilt I finally made was based on. 

I knew that was the one I wanted to make! The pattern was included in this book. The pattern name is "Color Junction".   I did figure out some shortcuts on piecing but stuck with the original size and colors.

Every quilt has a story.