Please tell me this looks like a tree

I’m making my Dad a quilt.  His birthday is coming up and it’s a good time.  My Dad only reads my blog when my Mom tells him there’s something interesting, so I’m counting on you, Mom, to keep my secret. 

My family probably thinks, o, yay, another quilt.  So, I gotta be creative to make them special.  I can see how difficult it must be for actors on the stage to WOW! the audience time after time after time.

I’m trying to quilt a family tree into the sashing strips.  Not going to show too much today, but I keep going back and forth between “this is art” and “I’m wasting thread”, so instead of the planned Christmas Tree post, I’m going off on a real life tangent because this is what’s on my mind.

I have two sisters.  Both are married.  Each couple, including us, has a child.  That’s a lot of threes for my Dad.  Three children, three sons-in-law (except one isn’t in law yet), three offspring. 

So, each of my branches ends in three branches.

I’m not really trying for an exact picture of a tree.  There are times I want to exactly reproduce a picture, but not now.  This is a stylized tree, just to make you think tree when you see it.  So, does it?

It’s hard to keep a stylized tree from looking like one from The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  Those trees were meant to look scary.

Anyway, I just keep sitting at the machine and it keeps flowing out of my hands.  No plan.  Just do whatever comes next.  I’ve been worried that every time I sat down at the machine, it would look different and create a disjointed bunch of quilting…believe me, it happens.  But, not this time, so it must truly be my Muse’s inspiration.

While I’ve been quilting, I’ve been thinking about family.  It’s that time of year, and really, what better to think about while you’re quilting a family quilt.  I always like to think about whoever is going to get the quilt and what they might think and who they might be and what their experiences were.  This time I know all that and I can think about the memories.  I’m reliving some fun ones and some not so fun ones.  But, that’s what makes a family, right?

Okay, so that’s it for me.  Freezing weather coming.  It is as warm right now as it will be all day.  So, the dog and I are going for a walk.

Be well.  Have a great Thursday.  Lane