A Patchwork Quilt for My Grandson, Patrick

My first grandson is being born in August of this year. His name is going to be Patrick Robert. I am really looking forward to his birth and because I live so far away from my son, Rick and my daughter-in-law, Marjory, I wanted to do something nice for Patrick.

I thought that I would make Patrick a quilt. I used to do a lot of sewing at one time and I have made a few quilts in my time. Patrick's quilt is going to be very special and he will have the only one in the world, guaranteed.

I write children's stories. I have written 900 of them to date. With my children's stories, I have several different characters that I write about. I thought it would be a wonderful idea to use those characters in Patrick's quilt. What I am going to do is take six of my male characters like Billy Troll, Travellin' Rick, Hillbilly Bob etc. I have drawn pictures of these characters and have a colour laser printer so I am going to print the white squares on the printer. These blocks will be about one foot wide by one foot long. In between the blocks, I will sew a patchwork quilt pattern in blue shades of fabric. I will then sew a border in the same shades of blue fabric as well.

I am not sure how I will quilt it yet but I am thinking that I want to quilt it by hand. I am thinking that on the white blocks of fabric I will quilt aroound each character and then on the blue shades of fabric I am thinking of quilting a pattern of little clouds on it.

I am really looking forward to getting started on this quilt. I am going to start off by purchasing the tshirt transfers first and then enough white fabric for the six blocks. That way I can get my characters onto the fabric. Once that is done, I will then purchase the blue fabric. For the blue fabric I am thinking of using light blue shades. That will be fairly easy to sew. The most time consuming part will be the actual quilting of the quilt.

I hope Patrick will appreciate his quilt and I'm sure he will. I am hoping to be able to have the quilt in Rick and Marjory's hands so that they can bring Patrick home from the hospital in it.

Don't worry, I will be taking pictures of the quilt as I sew it and once it is done, I will post the photographs of it on this hub so that you can all enjoy it and like I said this is going to be a one-of-a-kind quilt, guaranteed.

June 19, 2009 - Today I purchased the fabric and the tshirt transfers for Patrick's quilt. However, I have a laser printer and the tshirt transfers are just for inkjet printers. I will have to figure out another way of doing this quilt.

June 21, 2009 - I have an idea of how I'm going to solve the problem of Patrick's quilt. I decided to tape a piece of fabric to a piece of cardstock paper and run it through my laser printer. It worked. I am amazed.

June 22, 2009 - I have started sewing Patrick's quilt. I have the first row done. It is going to be six squares across by ten rows down. It is turning out way better than I could ever have imagined. I think this is going to be one awesome quilt for one awesome little boy.

June 24, 2009 - I have three more blocks printed off for Patrick's quilt. The three I did today were Travellin' Rick (who by the way, is my daughter-in-laws favourite character and she is the mother of Patrick), Homie and Ice.

June 26, 2009 - Three more blocks are completed. This time I put Hillbilly Bob, Jen-Jen and Lucky Leprechaun on the quilt. I started sewing this block yesterday and when I got to the Lucky Leprechaun block, I heard someone popping up on my computer so I went to check it out and it was my daughter, Jenny. She told me that Michael Jackson had just died. I was in shock and couldn't finish this row yesterday. I am still in shock over his death. It is so sad.

July 3, 2009 - I finished the fourth row of the quilt today and it is looking so awesome!!! I can't believe how well it is coming together. The fourth row has The PeaPods, Pirate Pete and Batty. I am thinking that the 5th row will have Fawn and Spot in it. How can I make a quilt of my children's story characters and not include them. They are the backbone of my website.

July 15, 2009 - A lot of personal things have been preventing me from working on this my grandson's quilt. I have been exhausted, sick with a stomach infection and stressed right out. Also, we had a little scare with Patrick because the hospital told my daughter-in-law that baby Patrick was having complications. It turns out he is going to be fine and should be born now in about 5 weeks time. I am now at the half-way mark of his quilt and just hope I get the ambition back that I need to finish this quilt for my sweet little grandson.