I Want to Ride My Bicycle Quilt

One of Ian's favourite things to do is ride his bicycle. His favourite bike trips include visits to Prince Edward Island, France and Amsterdam. He is also a city planner and loves the big cities. Over the years I have picked out fabrics that might work for a quilt for him, however recently He asked me to make him a quilt. I was thrilled to do so and knew I wanted to somehow combine his love of cities and biking.

Kate of Bike Swim Quilt had sent me a lovely mug rug that was a graphic representation city map http://www.flickr.com/photos/swimbikequilt/5756737764/in/set-72157628644512865 that started me off on the inspiration trail.

I did a google search and flickr search of bike quilts but surprisingly there were not too many. But this one from Krista stood out for me and the idea of linear layers with different quilting styles took hold. >a http://www.flickr.com/photos/spottedstonestudio/6327464042/in/photostream

Then I added roads and embroidered the words of the Queen song. The back I pieced from left overs and added some batik hugs and kisses. Binding stumped me for awhile but black KONA did the trick. I ALMOST had this ready for Christmas but was slow at the hand sewing of the binding so a few days later I gave it to Ian - He was thrilled which warms my heart. But its not done yet - I want to embroider some little bicycles and put on a label and I was a few inches short on the binding. For christmas I got some lovely binding clips which really helped me out and did not stick into me like pins do - Thanks Matthew and Dawn!

This project is my submission for the VMQG UFO challenge - hopefully I can get these last things finsihed by the time of our meeting.