Always on my mind ~ So Blue

You know how sometimes you get an idea in your head and you can't shake it? You might analyze the situation and say it is just not rational but then you really want to do it anyway?  This is "So Blue" a portrait of my mother when she was 16. The back building is the Joslyn art museum which I thought was fitting for my work of art!

So you start and you see this is going to be a big messy project. You can almost see pieces of your hair turning gray but you keep going.

Your iron is not trustworthy, you math skills are questionable but you stick to it and hope no one else in the house needs any clear space for the foreseeable future...so you keep at it.  Almost all the blocks are made up of 100 1.5" squares. The bottom row has one less row. 1960 cut 1.5" squares..yesserieeee!

 

Then, things start to happen. (I can tell you up close you have no idea what you are doing. Even stepping back I had to use my camera lens to look at it at such close quarters)

.....lots more pics in this post so Sorry ahead of time!

You are no longer in control.

 

 

This is taking over. I was dreaming in blue at this point and so worried that my calculating was wrong and that the 20 shades of blue I was using were going to run out.  I actually did run out of one. I only needed  5 more squares so I shaded it with another. That was scary. I had collected the fabrics over a years worth of time and had not done all the math when I was buying.
.....On a wing and a prayer maybe? I don't know.

My test block to sew and see how hard it was going to be to sew all those squares.

Starting to shape up and be a little more manageable.

 

 

The rows were pretty easy but the whole thing started being pretty heavy and stiff. Lots of seams to match!!!

 

 

I am already changing my mind on how to quilt this as it is very stiff and heavy yet fragile.  I think simple is best. Straight-line quilting in a simple grid for me!

 

 





I finished the morning I was heading to meet up with my sister and niece. So I brought it to reveal. It was very sunny.  It was very windy.  I hope I can get a few more pics posted that might or might not be a little better. This shot was in Memorial gardens where there are 1200 varieties of roses. Some of my sisters came here last year to remember the passing of our mother.  Even though this shot is not great it has a lot of meaning to me.

Me and my bad hair, sis in the shades. You can see the grid quilting in this pic. I realized when writing this post I have no other pics showing the quilting. It will have to wait because I am taking it to our guild quilt show and it will be hanging there till the weekend.  It is not a juried show which is good but no matter I love this piece so much.  I hope you all do to.

   Linking up with I have to say for Show and tell Tuesday
and  Fabric Tuesday
and SewFreshQuilts with Lorna
andFreshly PIeced
and Crazy mom quilts Finish it up friday