BLOCK - MOTORCYLE MAMA

BLOCK MAKER: CANDY KRAMLICH
ARTIST: PATTY EISENBRAUN

Patty's original drawing

Quilted Block

When the Hats theme was decided on, I didn’t know what I would do. Then I saw a Roberta Sparr notecard on a friend’s facebook timeline. It was an Airedale on a Harley and I thought “that’s what I want to do”. So I asked my artist, Patty Eisenbraun, what she thought and this is what she came up with. There’s a motorcycle history in my early married years and I always enjoyed riding on the back of my husband’s Harley. And whenever our Airedales heard “his” bike coming down the street, they got all excited. And it fits in with my current Airedale’s personality. Pinky is on the small side but packs a lot of power – she’s a rough and tumble kind of girl even at 9 years old!

This is my 3rd year making a block for the Rescue Quilt and I could see the progress I’ve made in my stitching. They are more even and closer together and for the most part I was able to progress relatively quickly. I only pricked myself a few times w/the needle and no blood was drawn this year nor were fingers sewn to the background fabric as in previous years! I did seem to have a problem though with the ears and the beard. It took me a while to decide on what fabrics to use and then to manipulate the cut out fabric for those parts into shape. Smaller pieces still give me trouble or maybe it’s just that as I get older, my hands aren’t as nimble. I still need the cheater magnifying reading glasses to thread the needle and see what I am sewing!

Here are some of my progress photos. Most of us used a vinyl overlay with the pattern drawn on it to help us place our pieces on the pieced background, and I found this new technique very helpful this year so that I had my pieces positioned correctly on the background. I also struggled a bit w/the beard and the ears for some reason and cut out several different pattern pieces for each from different materials. I felt that my drawing was probably the simplest to do of all the blocks with few pointed pieces for which I was very, very thankful! Points are hard to do!!

Here are some of my progress photos:

Auditioning Fabric

Vinyl overlay on pieced background

Sewing on pieces

Checking placement on background

Checkout the "eyes" in the goggles