Taking a line for a walk

So Bad Hair Day Lady has a little boy (I'll call him lego boy) who loves to draw. When he was 4/5 years old he went through a particularly creative phase and lucky BHDL would stumble upon these magnificent pictures when tidying up after her noisy brood. She told me these pictures reminded her of Paul Klee, who said 'Drawing is taking a line for a walk' (or something like that).

Now I am not ashamed to say that I don't know my Klee's from Kandinsky's but I could see the link:

Panels of the doodle quilt

Lego Boy's drawings aged 4-5

Well needless to say this tripped the quilty ideas switch in my head and I had a lot of fun choosing fabrics and machine quilting the pictures - it really made me notice all the small details, like tiny faces in the windows of trucks. The machine embroidery was also a great way of using up Aunty Maureen's cottons, some of which are very old.

Doodle quilt detail: looks like a snail

Doodle quilt detail: birdcage head man and friend

Doodle quilt central panel: Thimble on the right

Probably a bit narcissistic, but I couldn't help putting my picture in the middle of the quilt (that is me on the right with the big chin). I wanted to join up the pictures with a maze design, but it got a bit complicated so I did a modified maze:

Taking a line for a walk quilt

For the border, I wanted to use up all the odds and end bits, so I used my new bias binding maker and was very pleased with the result, and with my thriftiness.

strippy bias binding

Anyway I was thrilled with the end result, so thanks Lego Boy for your inspiration. I hope this stands the test of time. Weirdly enough the portrait of me from the central panel (done in felt tip pen) was in a frame on my bookshelf and over the course of the year whilst making the quilt, the picture slowly faded away and now is just a ghost outline...it would have been lost forever had I not embroidered it into this quilt!