for years and years and years now, much like the plans for
the lion king quilt,
lisa and i had always talked about someday making a ninja turtles baby quilt for our cousin brian. he was an avid turtle fan throughout his childhood, and our dear aunt donna had kept his turtle candles and even reused them in recent years prior to her passing. just under two years ago, brian married the girl of his dreams and this year it was announced they were due with a baby boy in october. lisa and i revisited the idea of making the turtle quilt together, divvying up the turtles and their weapons and made plans for it to be finished in time for the baby to be here mid october. life got crazy, so it was pushed back to being planned to be a christmas gift. and then life got real crazy...
our grandma myrna passed away at the end of september, just about week shy of her 91st birthday and baby p was born just a few days after. once the funeral date was secured (last friday) lisa and i knew we needed to get this done and ready to give it to brian, brandy and baby in person so we kicked things in to super high gear.
our game plan shifted a bit even more with the time crunch. originally, there were talks of a pizza block in the middle, paper pieced to match the turtles, but as the funeral inched closer, there just wasn't time to do it. lisa and i still had our blocks split, her taking the red & orange while i had the blue and purple. right now i should also include the disclaimer that it was much easier for us to refer to them by color... and will probably remain that way throughout the rest of the post :)
the evolution of quilting also changed a bit. at first, i wasn't going to quilt in the blocks. after thinking it through, i know that was one regret i had with the two quilts i made for amy's kiddos, but i couldn't make up my mind. i had thought to just free motion quilt, but then i realized i had more practice with that on the long arm than a domestic machine. lisa and i talked about echoing the head/weapons, but i felt like that would get boring with a lot of starts and stops... then i remembered this jagged type of idea that i'm pretty sure i remember learning when i took the "walk this way" class at meissner's, and in my head it felt perfect.
lisa finished her blocks on friday, dropped them in the mail and got them to me on monday. i was booted from my apartment due to a stairwell replacement, so i was jamming each night at my parent's to get this done before the funeral on friday. instead of the pizza block, we opted for this quarter square triangle block to tie in to each of the turtles, and i am OBSESSED with how perfect my points got on this... so sue me with being excited. i also remembered this stitch from "walk this way" to echo the triangles in a wonky sort of way, and as i got it going, i was so happy with the decision. monday night, i made the center block, trimmed and interfaced the back of the pieced blocks, and got the top entirely together. tuesday, i quilted the middle block between jobs and stitched two turtle blocks... while crossing all my fingers and toes that pg&e didn't cut off the power. wednesday, i finished up EVERYTHING like a crazy person. i thought i would be able to go back to my own bed that night, but since it was after 11 by the time i finished sewing on the binding... it didn't happen. and thursday led me to my next crazy idea...
initially i had thought to reach out to my guild members to see if someone could machine embroider a basic quilt tag for us, but as you can see, my brain was a little on overdrive with everything going on. so after a lot of thinking while driving, i thought making a tag shaped like pizza would be perfect, since it was ninja turtles and we didn't get the pizza block on the front. i had lisa send me a photo of her name in her handwriting, traced it on to the yellow once i got my pizza template and started stitching away while watching the masked singer & the goldbergs. the black olive heart is a little nod towards our family joke that you aren't a true member of the family if you don't like black olives... and brian doesn't ;)
after all things funeral wrapped up last friday and after we spent time at grandma's looking through old things to see what any of us may want, we all went to do what we do, which is eat ice cream at leatherby's family creamery. while brandy and the baby didn't make the 4 hour trek for the funeral, we still made brian open it so we could see the reaction we were hoping for... and it was there.
lisa and i have worked on so many projects side by side over the years, or even the same project together with our own interpretations to it (remember the
twin sweater dogs?) but this was a lot of fun to put our brains together to create this project for another member of our family. while we've had 3 major losses in a year and a half (all three especially affecting brian, as he lived with our grandparents for years and lost his own mom last november) our family has remained close even throughout it all. we are so lucky to have had these grandparents show us the importance of family and while we all went through our angsty teen years in one way or another, any time we gather together we can talk, laugh, and celebrate like a day hasn't passed since the last visit.
lisa and i both talked about how we remember brian and my little brother being buddies together during our childhood and how one day he was going to be a great dad. now that he has a little buddy of his own, i know we can't wait to see how he officially turns in to a dad. just watching him gush over photos of his little one last weekend was a side of brian i was so excited to see.
what will lisa and i sew together next?
well, actually 2 prior project i did with her (both virtually and in person) are up next to be blogged. kind of hopped around to get this quilt up sooner than later :)
pattern:
fandom in stitches ninja turtle patterns with our own center quarter square triangle block
quilt count: 124
