Wednesday, January 6, 2016

VW Bug

When I was a kid, my dad had a red VW.  He loved that car although he couldn't drive it in the rain (no working wipers) and it had rusted all the way through in spots.  He eventually sold the car and then bought a 1974 yellow VWand fully restored it.

This car can be driven in the rain although he probably doesn't take it out of the garage on days when it could get muddy.  He enjoys showing the car at local car shows and taking it out for a drive on a nice day.

His VW was my inspiration for this mini quilt I made him for Christmas.


I really wanted the VW applique to pop so I used an extra layer of batting and did some initial quilting to just outline the car.


And from the back


And then carefully trimmed away the excess batting.


Then I made my quilt sandwich.  In addition to some thread painting, I made some waving lines as if to suggest it was flying driving a light speed.


My dad loves it!

This mini sure was fun to do.  In hindsight, I do wish I put it on a neutral background with some amount of a low scale print on it or maybe even gotten all fancy and made a road scene.  When I was creating it, my head kept thinking it would take up more of the space than it actually did.  (I sized this to be placemat sized so my dad would have that option.)


I'd never tired this technique with the batting before - it was fun!

Happy Stitching!

3 comments:

  1. Wonderful quilt! What a great memento!

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  2. Nice! My first car and what I drove in high school was a baby blue 74 VW bug, fun in the summer but killer in the winter as it had a very wimpy heater!

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  3. When I met my DH he drove a yellow VW bug. It might have been a 1970 model. What is funny is my DH is 6'3" tall, and he drove that little buggy for years. Great quilt!

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