Sunday 24 October 2010

Family fairness

Everyone knows that in a family, fairness is VERY important.  Things can't always be exactly equal, but if there is any perceived unfairness it usually gets highlighted pretty quickly.  When I'm sewing I can't make the same thing for everybody all at the same time, so someone always gets to go first.  With quilts, I made one for Cam first, because I felt he gets far fewer things sewn for him than his sister (skirst and dolls' clothes being far easier to sew than trousers or superhero outfits).  With cushions I made one for G first, as he gets even less sewn for him than Cam.

Since then I've made quilts for everyone except G and cushions for everyone except Cam.  The final cushion was made last week for his 11th birthday.  He wanted a Swiss-themed one so I cut into some gloriously kitsch printed cotton which I bought in Interlaken in the summer and made a simple, panelled cushion.



And happily the date of his birthday this year has a nicely quirky symmetry to it, which deserves recording for posterity in embroidery: 20.10.2010


So now everybody has a cushion.  That's fair.

My V&A themed circle cushion

G's watery themed log-cabin cushion

O's pink cushion, made with fabrics from favourite old clothes, and other projects

And nearly everyone has a quilt.

O finally got her strawberry quilt last month:


C has his orange-and-combat-coloured boy quilt:


And I have my spectacular red Kaffe Fassett quilt:


So that just leaves G.  

A quilt for the man I love, however, seems so loaded with difficult design decisions.  Should I go with a water theme again?  He does love swimming, but I've already done a watery cushion, so I feel I should do something different for his quilt.  He also loves his bikes so very much, but something involving wheels or spokes sounds like it might be a quilting challenge too far.  Mountains, forests and trees are other great loves of his and I think those may be more easy to incorporate - perhaps with some applique, which I've not used on a quilt before.

I need to make a decision soon.  It really isn't fair that he has had to wait so long for a quilt - he feels the cold more than any of us and would love nothing more than to curl up under a quilt of his own on a winter evening.  What's more he has a significant birthday coming up early next year, so I really should crack on shouldn't I? 

5 comments:

  1. You've made your family some lovely things. Good luck with deciding on the theme for G's quilt. Men are so difficult aren't they?

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  2. such loveliness xxx

    there's a flickr group of quilts for men if you want inspiration, apparently they are notoriously difficult to please..... I got round it by making us a joint one. with our wedding anniversary on it, so he has no excuses about forgetting xxxx

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  3. Mr Coffee is lucky to have his own blanket. I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

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  4. Oh I am so in love with the Swiss fabric! K X

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  5. You know what? A cool thing would be to find some OS map material, or screen print some, of G's last race, and use that to quilt. If you could find someone who can screen print, you could even mark his routes on. And that, along with some lovely water based material would do him!
    http://www.michaelmillerfabrics.com/MMF/Popup1_Swatch.cfm?Popup=1&&Kwds=water

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