Buggy Quilt Block

I love bugs.  

Er rather Bugs.

VW ones. 

I grew up with them.  My family had at least 3 Bugs throughout my growing up years (old tan one, a yellow rag top, and a light blue one), along with a few other VW's (brown Rabbit, yellow Rabbit, yellow Squareback).  My car was the blue Bug (after my older sisters drove it), David owned the yellow rag-top (and an MG) and my brother Brian, one grade older than me, drove the yellow Squareback.  My little brother Mark drove Dad's old truck.  :)  Our family of 9 used to pack ourselves into one little Bug and drive to church and wherever else.  Dad would drive, Mom would hold Mark on her lap, the 4 oldest would squeeze in the backseat and me and Brian would sit in the little cubby just behind the back seat.  I don't know how often we did that; I just remember driving through the woods that way (not on a road through the woods, but really through the woods, taking a short cut home).

So Volkswagens are pretty much a part of me.  In fact, I used to want to name a boy Vance William, so that he could be my little VW. 

There is a lady that we go to church with that has a river kayaking business.   She advertises with a giant magnet on the side of her sky blue Bug.  I like her.  We've gone biking a couple of times together.  We have some great things in common: Volksies; P.E. (she is also an elementary school P.E. teacher); sporty stuff.

Anyway, our Relief Society is making a quilt for this lady, and gave a bunch of women a quilt block to do.  They wanted it to be a "crayon" quilt.  I thought that it was pretty cool how it worked, so I wanted to share.  I want to try this technique with the kids.

I thought that it would be cool to do a picture of her Bug with a kayak on top. 

I found a picture of a Bug online, printed it out, and taped it to the back of my quilt block, like so:

Then taped it on the window to trace it.  Isn't that cool how it shows through so well?

After tracing it it looked like this:

And then I colored it using ordinary old crayons, which made it look less like a Bug than it had before I colored it.  Oh well, what can you do?

When it was colored to my liking, I put newspaper (kids' book orders) down over it, and with a hot iron ironed it for just a few seconds. 

And what do you know?  The newspaper totally sucked the wax right out.  It is hard to tell in the picture below, but it doesn't feel or look crayon-y anymore.

I added the words and ironed again.

Now time for the stitching (embroidery).

My MIL embroidered the kayak and the front of the car, then I finished it.

It was quite relaxing sitting in the sun stitching.

The car after I was done embroidering:

I really wanted to add a bunch of detail, but didn't think that I had time.  Weston was going to be leaving to go to town and he was going to take it to the lady's house that was putting the quilt together.  

I told myself that I would do one of these for myself someday and add all the detail that I fancied.

But then he took forever coming inside, and so I started stitching the letters, which I wasn't planning on doing. 

Then I added my and my MIL's name to it.  

I love doing letters.  I am such a letter (and name) person.

After I finished our names and looked at it, I wished that I had made our names coming out like they were the exhaust.  That would've been cool.  I wasn't about to pick out all that stitching, though.  Plus Weston was ready to take it in anyway.

I suppose I should have ironed it, but I was shoving it into a ziplock bag, so I didn't really see the point.  Here it is when I was all done with it:

Post Script:  

I think that I like taking pictures of the whole process of creating something, and then blogging about it just as much as I like creating the something.  It's all on that large creative spectrum, I suppose.

Post Post Script:  

Tomorrow is Dr. Suess's brithday, as you are probably well aware.  He would have been 108 years old.  We will be driving to Utah, and, on the way there, reading as many of his books as I can round up tomorrow morning before we leave.  Do you know what word he invented?  I mean he invited LOADS of words, but this one is so very common; I never would have thought.  I know, I am such a NERD!  

That's the word.  

He invented the word nerd.

In 1951.

The adjective nerdy is from 1978.

Who knew, right?

Post Post Post Script (seriously?):
I think that I am going to change my blog address to theboonielife.com.  What do you think?