A special quilt to comfort

This pattern is called Nature Guide by Elaine Theriault and was published in Spring 2017 edition of Quilts and More magazine.  This magazine has been living in my sewing lounge for months as I was using another pattern to cut charity quilt kits - so I didn't have to look far for a big easy pattern!

We heard recently that  our son friend B  had been diagnosed with leukemia.  At a time when the virus has changed our world, its hard enough, let alone to find out your child is so ill.  It took me a very little time to realise that the only way I was going to make sense of this was to make him a quilt.  I figured this pattern might work best, because I wanted novelty prints.  Not generally my go to for a teenager, but when your stuck in a hospital bed and cannot do the outdoor things you love, then I figured camping, fishing and farm novelty prints it was!  

I rang my friend who has a quilt shop, she directed me to another quilt shop, who directed me to a third shop.  Honesty quilters are the best kind of people.  IN the middle of a global crisis that might see their business go under, they just directed me to the shop that was going to have what I wanted.  Didn't try and sell me what they had!  All the fabric came via a home run patchwork business out of Kaniva called Little Desert Quilts.  The fun bit was I ordered it via FaceBook!  She has photos of fabrics on FaceBook and I tagged which ones I wanted then she put them all together and sent me photos so I could see how they looked together.  I was a bit sceptical about using the green fishing rods for the sashing, but it worked out fine.

I increased the size of the sashing to 1.5" cut, rather than 1" in the pattern, which resulted in a few errors.  The middle row with three blocks was too long, and the top two thirds of the block was then a bit wider then the bottom third.  But never fear, no points to loose here!

The day the fabric arrived was going out to do the grocery shopping and deliver charity quilt kits I had into volunteers mailboxes. So all I achieved that day was the cutting out...and boy was my arm sore that night! But all six blocks were made the next day.  With sashing this makes the quilt approximately 42 " x 63".  The full pattern is twice this size, but I wanted to stick to the recommended size....B is in the children's hospital that I normally make quilts for.  They have stopped accepting donations and distributing quilts because of Covid 19.

I am lucky to get this quilted by friend and long arm quilter Vicki Jenkin.  Unfortunately because of Covid 19 she has not had a lot of work coming in and was happy to fit this all over in between some custom quilting.  I dropped the quilt off in a garbage bag, she let it isolate for a few days.  Then emailed me some patterns and a photo of the thread colour choices.

 I replied and presto the geometric pattern was done in what seemed like no time at all. This is a terrible photo, the backing is a blue black...not grey!
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I dropped it off to B grandmothers place on his birthday...that was the incentive to unpick a corner of the binding and sew the label in.  I am so used to making anonymous charity quilts without labels I forgot!  The doctors have let him out of hospital for a night :) so important positive progress.  Stay safe, stay well and happy quilting Sue.