The (not) Tardis arrives

So my sister asked if I could make her a quilt. Of course! I'm now an experienced quilter, with maybe 3 or 4 quilts to my name. I can do a custom request, easily. What do you want? Well, a few days go by and she says 'can you make me one like this?' and it is a very beautiful quilt that looks like the Tardis from her favorite show, Dr. Who? Well, without a real pattern, I'd have to make it up as I go, and it wouldn't look exactly like the picture, but if it was close enough, it'd work, right? Mind, this is coming from someone who hasn't seen the show since it was a re-run back in the...we'll just say a long time ago. But I knew how to work with strips, and I could make a block. I could do this.

So I began finding all the blues I had. Then cut them into 2.5 in strips. But I couldn't have just strips in the blocks, they needed to be square, because all blocks are square, but they still didn't look quite right, so I just kept adding sides to make it look like a square. Each block ended up 22in x 22in. and the body was 4 blocks wide, and 4 blocks tall (because the Tardis had windows), but it also was a British 'police box' so I also had to add the top borders with that on top. Then a border completed every quilt. By the time the thing was done, it was almost 100 in wide and 110 in long! I could only quilt a couple inches at a time, as I had to move it every couple inches, which was a really involved mess because I was sewing in a very small room. The above picture is the only picture I have of the incomplete gift.

She loved it, and it was so much fun, despite how much work went into it. Now that I have a few more quilts to my name and I know how to read a pattern, quilts are a bit easier, a bit faster, and way more fun. Each new quilt brings new challenges and like the Tardis for my sister, I pour my heart into every stitch to make it just right. Next week come back and I'll share another learning experience that still brings a chuckle!