This one was made for my husband for Christmas in 2003. I wanted to make him a car themed quilt and put all of his former cars on it. 
Finding checkered flag fabric was easy, and I finally found a grey car fabric that went with it. The stripes are the colors of racing flags. I had never put photos on a quilt and was afraid to try it myself, so I took the photos to PIP and asked them to put them on transfers. Then I went to a t-shirt shop and had them apply the transfers for me, because I never get the iron hot enough to do it right. Now they have fabric sheets that you can feed into your printer and print your own photos right off the computer!
I found the best photo I could of each of Mike's sports cars/race cars that he has owned or used in autocrossing over the years. His 1972 Datsun 240Z is right in the middle in a place of honor :-) I searched for patches for each car and also had some patches from the Sports Car Club (he's a 36 year member) and some patches from races that he worked. As usual the quilting was the biggest problem for me once I got the top done. I just "stitched in the ditch" along both sides of each row of flags and around the border and figured that was enough to keep it from falling apart.
I designed the pylon border (better seen in the first photo) and added one "crumpled" pylon for all the ones he's hit over the years (3 second penalty in autocrossing). I would love to stamp some tire tread on this pylon, but don't know how to do it or get the design.....oh well....no use rubbing it in TOO much :-)
I found this great green and black checked cozy flannel for the back. When I first got the idea, I thought I might paper-piece each of his cars. Well.....that wasn't too bad for his little Golf GTI that he owns now, but when I looked at the race cars I realized that there was no way I could design blocks that looked like those! The photos were much easier! So the GTI patch became my label for the back.
Mike is tall so I had to make this extra long! None of my other lap quilts fit him. This one is 63 x 82. You can see that he enjoys it! This photo was taken with my old camera before I had a digital and is not as sharp as the others.
Finding checkered flag fabric was easy, and I finally found a grey car fabric that went with it. The stripes are the colors of racing flags. I had never put photos on a quilt and was afraid to try it myself, so I took the photos to PIP and asked them to put them on transfers. Then I went to a t-shirt shop and had them apply the transfers for me, because I never get the iron hot enough to do it right. Now they have fabric sheets that you can feed into your printer and print your own photos right off the computer!
I found the best photo I could of each of Mike's sports cars/race cars that he has owned or used in autocrossing over the years. His 1972 Datsun 240Z is right in the middle in a place of honor :-) I searched for patches for each car and also had some patches from the Sports Car Club (he's a 36 year member) and some patches from races that he worked. As usual the quilting was the biggest problem for me once I got the top done. I just "stitched in the ditch" along both sides of each row of flags and around the border and figured that was enough to keep it from falling apart.
I designed the pylon border (better seen in the first photo) and added one "crumpled" pylon for all the ones he's hit over the years (3 second penalty in autocrossing). I would love to stamp some tire tread on this pylon, but don't know how to do it or get the design.....oh well....no use rubbing it in TOO much :-)
I found this great green and black checked cozy flannel for the back. When I first got the idea, I thought I might paper-piece each of his cars. Well.....that wasn't too bad for his little Golf GTI that he owns now, but when I looked at the race cars I realized that there was no way I could design blocks that looked like those! The photos were much easier! So the GTI patch became my label for the back.
Mike is tall so I had to make this extra long! None of my other lap quilts fit him. This one is 63 x 82. You can see that he enjoys it! This photo was taken with my old camera before I had a digital and is not as sharp as the others.I wrote about Mike and his love of cars and showed most of these car photos in my other blog on his birthday. Happy Birthday Mike!
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5 comments:
The pictures here really don't do the quilt justice. It is really nice. The nicest thing is when your racing days are over you can still wrap yourself up in great memories.
Thanks, Mike :-)
For future reference, if you want to get a tire tread pattern, try doing a prairie braid in just the right colors. A friend did a John Deere quilt--think tractor fabric and green and yellow tone on tones--with black and grey treads as borders. Way cool!
Katney: That sounds like a neat quilt and a great idea! What I wanted here was just some "tire marks" on the pylons....more of a stamping or painting problem rather then a quilting one....to indicate that they had been run over a few times.
Clever clever...what a cool quilt and Mike looks so cozy lying there.
Sounds like a difficult process to go through. You must love that guy!
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