Eric's Quilt

My brother used to live in England, he is a social worker for the air force. I was desperate to see him, and Europe for that matter. My sweet husband proved that he loved me and told me to go.

The first problem we faced, a ticket was almost $1000.  Now what I am is cheap, and the budget for this trip was $1300. I decided to check out my options. Option 1: spend all the money getting there and then never leaving my brother's house 2: stow away in the cargo hold of the plane 3: find a buddy pass. I went with option three and decided to call a family friend. He is a flight attendant for United Airlines, I took a deep breath and called him explained my situation and asked for a buddy pass.  I told him that I would love him forever, and that he might just get a quilt out of it.

I don't think that he believed me on the whole quilt thing. I think he thought that I would forget about it and he could tease me about it in the future.

Something along the line of "remember when I gave you a buddy pass, to see your favorite brother in England, and remember you said that you were going to give me a quilt."

And then I would laugh and remind him that I am a mother of four girls that keep me busy, and I just haven't found the time.

I didn't want to experience that awkward moment, and I didn't want to make excuses, and didn't want to lie. So I started working on it. I was going to make an Irish chain quilt. I have made like twenty of them, and knew I couldn't mess it up. I mean seriously, I have had a lot of practice.

Problem number one was finding fabric. I didn't want a floral, I mean even if he walks on the tender side I didn't think that a floral would be good. He said that blue was his favorite color, and I guess I could have done varying colors of blue in a solid fabric but that is BORING. Then one day I was visiting the selfish seamstress and saw this post http://selfishseamstress.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/oh-those-sassy-quilters/

I thought, oh my that would be so funny, but didn't know if I would be crossing a line.  I sent him an email asking him what he thought.  He loved it, and he loved the cowboys most of all.

This is what he got. I threw in a bandanna fabric and a printed denim.

A close up for good measure.

Here is the back I tried really hard to match the print on the back, as you can see I gave up and put a pieced strip down the back.

I have a good friend that does my quilting she was a little concerned about quilting these hotties, but for fun she quilted in the boarders "save a horse ride a cowboy" I mean how could I not.

Can you see it quilted there?

It was so much fun making this, the only problem was cutting up those cowboys to get them to fit.

In December this pattern came out. http://thehappyzombie.com/blog/?p=450 and I love it. I am currently making a Christmas version, that is red and white, with a super cute green for the little color strips.I think it would have been perfect for this. So Eric if you are reading this I can think of a few more places I want to go.