balloons, balloons everywhere!

Do you ever work on a custom item that's ..... how to say..... not exactly your style?

But that you are adjusting your style to make something really special for someone?

That's my current project in a nutshell.

It's for my dad.  I wanted to do a quilt for him.  And I wanted it to have hot air balloons because he crews a hot air balloon every year and loves it.  It's very special to him.

And months ago, I found this fabric.  And the balloons pictured are representations of actual balloons that he has seen.  So I bought a few yards of it and put it away.

I don't really do brights all that much.

and I was scared of this project!

Well, Christmas is coming.  

So one day a friend and I got together to sew.  I plopped the yardage on the table. 

"whatcha going to do with that?"

absolutely no idea.  Help me.

So we went through our stashes and pulled out fabrics that reflected the bright colors of the balloons and the sky.  

Those became the blocks in the middle.

I cut up blocks in the balloon fabric to make the filmstrip sashing.

And then I realized that I needed a bit more length and had a metric ton of balloons left....

so I added the top and bottom rows of balloons.

and THEN I realized that when I trimmed up the quilt, 

IF it wasn't square, 

those boxy balloons were going to tell on me.

So I added another row of black.

So I think I'm really going to like it better when it's quilted.

I'm quilting it in black thread, so I think it will need a solid black backing 

since black quilting has been the death of me before... 

remind me to tell you about that one sometime......

And I'm going to bind it in the harlequin fabric.  

Well, that is IF my friend still has any in her closet!