My son asked me a while ago if I could make a picture for my grandson’s room for his first birthday, which would also be a memory of my father, who sadly died last November. It took me a while to come up with a rough plan for that and when I learned that the theme for our Endeavourers Challenge quilt this quarter was collage, I decided to combine the two.

It was a tall order.

My Dad was interested in absolutely everything and was a wealth of information on all sorts of subjects, ranging from gardening, history, current affairs and the natural world to how to do just about anything.

He was also very funny, sociable, generous and a constant inspiration. He never backed down on a principle or gave up on a project and he would always find out, work out or try out ways to solve any problem until he succeeded. Whenever a solution to anything was needed, he would give no consideration to whether something could be accomplished, only to how it could be done – even if the eventual conclusion was that it wouldn’t be practical for a number of clearly explained reasons.

With anything we ever wanted to do, he would say, “Give it a try”. And if things went wrong he would say, “You always learn something – even if it’s just not to do it again!”

In the end, as a remembrance of my Dad in this quilt I decided to include concord and the metal cogs. My Dad was born during WWll and, like so many children of his generation, he saw fighter planes flying over and grew up with a passion for aircraft. When he left school at age 15 (with no qualifications but boundless curiosity and keen to learn and work hard) he got a job in an engineering factory and soon moved to Vickers Aircraft Factory (which became BAC then BAE Systems) where he did a seven year apprenticeship in engineering, building aircraft and he continued to work there for a good part of my childhood. Eventually he set up in business with one of my brothers, who still runs their factory, designing and making machines for industries throughout the world including some well known names like Glaxosmithkline.

During his time at BAC, he worked on the Concord, which was the most beautiful and iconic plane of my lifetime. Although I was only three years old, I remember its first flight and whenever we heard its unique roar we would run into the garden to watch as a little piece of my father soared through the skies with unsurpassed elegance.

Once I was once lucky enough to see one close up when a plane I was on on taxied slowly past it at Dublin Airport and it was a sad day when we heard that it going to be retired. The last time I saw it in the air was when I took my children into London to see the celebrations for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. We waited and waited and eventually decided we would have to go home but just as we came out of the tube at Victoria Station we heard it and ran out in time to see it sweep over London followed by a formation of red arrows.

As I had already missed the deadline of my grandson’s birthday, I also included a reminder of that. I put in the sea (because he lives near the sea) and a blue balloon because he kept the blue balloon from his birthday cake as a keepsake.

To make the quilt, I started by drawing the main outline onto a piece of linen stabilised with freezer paper and fusing on the hexagons for the sky and  scallop strips for the sea. I then attached the piece to wadding by machine stitching wavy lines (sky) and hand stitching (sea). After that, I then fused on the gold frame and quilted it with straight lines.

Finally, I fused on the various other elements apart from the metal cogs, which I glued on at the very end.

I printed the plane, concord, onto fabric and, because the background showed through, I fused that on a piece of silver fabric and cut round it then fused the whole thing onto the quilt.

The sausage dog (included because my daughter-in-law is a big fan of sausage dogs) is lighter than the photo and is velvet with leather ears and a leather nose and I was very surprised and impressed that the velvet didn’t fray.

Disappointingly the whole thing looked very drab so, in an effort brighten up the picture, I trialled a lot of different elements, colours and patterns.

I especially liked Bird Dot by Carrie Bloomston as it made me I realise I could liven it up by getting more colour into the ‘frame’ (rather than adding more colours to the picture) but it just was too light so I ended up using a gold metallic fabric and cutting dots to fuse on. 

That allowed me to put the words into the main picture where I thought there was now too much empty space.

I’ve never been a fan of fusing in quilts before but, apart from the trials of actually finding time to do this, I really enjoyed the collage techniques and I was very pleased with effect. In particular, I could never have got the point on the dog’s tail or the shine on the balloon so precise with turned applique and the fabric spots would have taken forever. I feel I’ve been missing a trick all these years!

The finished size of this quilt is 16″ x 20″ and to finish it off I put it in a simple gold frame.

I really enjoyed seeing everyone else’s collage quilts and, if you haven’t already, I definitely recommend visiting The Endeavourers to see what the other members of our group made for this challenge.

The next theme is Circles and Squares (for our final quarterly reveal of the year on 1st November) and I will be sure to start sewing earlier this quarter :)

Janine @ Rainbow Hare

(If you subscribe to my blog by email, firstly, thank you :) Secondly, I really recommend you view the web version because otherwise you end up with a random scramble of photos and I don’t know how to stop that happening).

I’m linking this post to TGIFF and going to see what other finishes have been linked up this week :)