Letters From Abroad

This quilt was made for my husband. It's been at least 15 years in the making & it's finally done. It all started when I was on my first Brampton Quilters Guild retreat. My quilting group had a shopping day on the way to the retreat and I ended up spending the most money & all within the last few minutes in the cash line. It was purchased in Guelph from the Greenwood Quiltery when it was in it's old location. I was waiting for my friends to cash out and I saw the "Letters From Abroad" bolts of fabric on the low shelf by the cash. That was it...a quick decision to purchase meters of every bolt. I didn't know what I was going to do but I knew that it was Chris. I have been purchasing fabric over all the years to add to the quilt. The quilt is compiled of everything that Chris likes & of course...collects. Pens being number one, ink bottles, books, watches, clocks, stamps, old script, numbers, tins, travel...it's very eclectic.
I had no idea how I was going to put it all together but it was everything that he loved, right down to his favorite colour...green. Then I saw a quilt that my friend & fellow quilter, Heather Hunter, put together & it was called the "Yellow Brick Road" pattern. Well that was it...I decided that it was going to be done in that style. OMG...I was so completely bored with putting the quilt together that I could never muster up the time to put it together. I made all the blocks but the colours were all too similar and it just wasn't working...so back it would go, into the box to ferment in my brain. Then it happened, a dream, of a collaged rag quilt. So I got some bright colours of fabric to add to the fabric that I already had left over & started working on the  flip side making mini collaged quilts with all the left over fabric. To do a complete queen size quilt, I needed a total of 99 blocks. Holy crap...that was a lot of collages. Just like normal, I started out great guns and made all the collaged squares. Then they needed to have the stabilizer taken off them, which was a huge undertaking, and then they still needed to be individually quilted.
The GOE Group's last challenge was to finish a project that was already started & the only stipulation was that you couldn't purchase any more fabric. Well, I decided that this would be my next piece. I thought that I was near done. Well...my memory wasn't accurate because I ended up having 50 blocks to finish. I was determined that this was it. I was going to finish and I did. Each quilted collage square, took a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes to quilt. Quilting in a continuous, geometric square & rectangle pattern,  is not as easy as it may look.
Thank you Woodrow Studio, for giving me the inspiration with the "Letters from Abroad" fabric series. My husband loves his quilt.
Thank you Heather, for helping me with making the pattern choice. You had no idea what your show & tell would lead me to undertake.

This is the collage side. As you can see the rag edges need to get worn in order to have the full rag effect. But that will come in time with wear & washing.

This is technically the right side in the Yellow Brick Road pattern.

Another shot of the collage side. The picture is actually upside down.

This shot shows a little of both sides.