For her first project with her new Brother DreamWeaver VQ3000, she wanted to start with something small. After a very short discussion, she and I agreed that the Windows 8 Start Screen/Modern UI interface would be a great starter project. Not only would it be fun to work on, it could be colorful, use a variety of stitching options, and use the ability to use a few different fonts to add some text.

Once I told her I would hang it in my office at work (which I have), she got started. (She knows me well enough that there would be a reasonable chance it could end up in a pile somewhere in my den or office).

She did not track how long it took to make, as it was her first project with the new sewing machine, but more than once she would drop by my den on a lazy Sunday afternoon with praise for her new sewing machine. Thankfully, she was able to use nearly all scraps for the quilt itself as it didn’t require larger fabric pieces. We did go to a famous fabric store once to buy some light blue thread.

She’d never owned a sewing machine that auto-threads the needle. I’m sure for many, that’s not news, but I was very impressed. I did a LOT of experimenting with colors and stitching patterns a few weekends and got extremely good at loading the thread so it could be auto-threaded onto the needle. I did it enough that she declared that I was much faster at it than her!

My wife is extremely organized, so she made many notes and sketches along the way so that the effort would be a “cut once, sew once” affair. (she’s has CS BS and MS, and Software Architect by day, so it’s maybe in her blood ).

She graphed out the whole thing mainly because there were so many pieces. While I didn’t mind if colors moved around after I had selected a location, she did. Further, our cat has a tendency to shuffle fabric piles a bit.

In any case, a several weeks later working on weekend afternoons and a few evenings, she completed the quilt.

I asked about making a Surface sized quilt and grinning, she answered, “maybe.”

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