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Saturday, July 6, 2013

[Quilt #4] [Quilt #5] Space Quilts. Masterpieces, for My Little Misters, Part 1

As a family, we're into space stuff.  Included in the Top Ten List of most awesome things I have experienced would be the crazy Easter Sunday we left after church to drive down to Titusville, Florida, arriving after 2 in the morning and laying out with a crowd under the stars while we waited, and followed the countdown, and saw the launch of STS-131, Discovery.  Night launch.  Amazing.  I get tears in my eyes recalling it, and our young sons' reaction to it.

That was our first close-up launch experience, and we were addicted.  We followed along at home on NASA tv and online and with three more drive-downs we were able to see 2 more launches live and in person, including the very last.  And for a couple of years, all our boys could talk about was space shuttles and rockets and wanting to be astronauts.  

And over a full year I looked at space-themed fabric online and gradually made purchases.  Only the best for my boys, but after seeing all that beautiful, fine fabric together in one place, I was completely intimidated by what to do next.  I relied on what we were taught in Landscape Architecture school: when you're stumped, look at pictures, lots of them, until you get excited and find inspiration and direction again.  And they taught us that before the internet!

I still had no idea what I was doing as far as quilt design goes, but one of the fabric lines I'd chosen was printed with actual NASA photos, so I was working with incorporating images that were roughly 10" square.  I scoured the internet for images of quilts that included square patches of fabric without being too static in their layout.  I knew I didn't want to simply frame and sash the images, I wanted movement and variety.  Finally I found this image, the blog from which it was taken being, unfortunately, no longer available:  


The varying sizes and shades of the blocks seems to make them appear and recede - like the fictional movie images of travelling through space.  I took some measurements from the photo, converted them to what they would proportionally be based on using 10" images, then printed out the above photo in black and white.  (Lots of landscape architecture drafting skills and tricks coming into play!)  From the black and white photo I was able to number the fabrics from light to dark, and when I laid out my space fabric collection from light to dark, I had almost exactly the same number of fabrics to work with.  Suddenly this quilt design process became as simple as mathematics and I was able to move forward confidently with my rotary cutter.  

Making 2 quilts at one time was certainly an undertaking.  Part of me wanted to move forward and do one start to finish, than the second start to finish, leaving the possibility for tweaking things and finding quicker/better ways with the first to use on the second.  I was honestly afraid, though, that the first one might be so overwhelming that I may not finish the second one, so I went with the production-line method.

I bought fabric during 2009 and 2010.  I started cutting early 2011 and worked very gradually on them until that Christmas.  I had hoped to have them finished before that Christmas, but I was trying to keep the project a secret, meaning I could only work on them late at night, and I only got as far as finishing the tops and pinning them up with backing and batting.  

That Christmas morning after all the presents were opened, I spread the unfinished quilts out on my bed and called the boys to come look.  My youngest was too young to realize what they were, but my oldest one gasped and jumped for joy.  It was a reaction more than I could have hoped for!  

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