I have a niece that loves to crochet. So one day while we were visiting with her Grandmother she got on the phone. She commented that if I made her a quilt she would crochet a blanket for me. I agreed and asked her what her favorite colors were and patterns she might like. She indicated her favorite color was purple and she loved stars. She also wanted a music theme, specifically piano, if I could find piano fabric. I said I would try and see what I could find.
The star block I choose to use is called Sawtooth Star. The center of the star is a nice size and features a themed fabric nicely. I found a dark purple fabric for the star points and four different coordinating purple fabrics for the star backgrounds. Luck must have been on my side because I found a fabric with a collage of piano keyboards and another fabric with music notes so I bought both. I used the piano keyboard fabric in the center of half of the stars and the music notes fabric in the center of the other stars.
One day while visiting a local fabric store I saw fabric that looked like piano keys on a piano. I was so excited I was almost jumping up and down with joy. I felt really silly because I grabbed the bolt of fabric so fast that if someone saw me they might have thought I was insane or a crazy woman. I did not want to loose the opportunity to get the perfect fabric! I used the piano keyboard fabric for the quilt border.
The next challenge was finding a fabric for the back of the quilt. When I can, I try to find something for the back of the quilt that goes well with the front of the quilt. Well, I didn’t think I could top the piano keys fabric, but I got very close. The backing fabric counts as a second perfect fabric. I found fabric that looks like sheet music. This time I did not act like the crazy, insane woman in the fabric store. I bought the second perfect fabric.
I am not sure which was more fun, making the quilt or giving it to my niece. I had mailed this quilt along with her sister’s quilt to my mother-in-law to hold for us. While we were visiting our family for our other niece’s wedding, we were all hanging out in the living room, so I got up to get the perfect music quilt. My niece happen to be in a recliner when I walked back into the living room. I walked up to her and said, “Remember when we agreed to make each other a blanket?” Her face lite up and she said, “Yeah.” I pulled the quilt out of the bag and covered her up with it. Because she was so excited the recliner started wiggling with joy too! She kept saying it was perfect and more than she had expected. Her reaction was priceless and made me so very happy to have made it for her.
Since then I have given her some of the fabric used in her quilt so now she has matching pillow cases. The piano keys fabric looks really cool on the pillow cases too.
Here is the crocheted blanket my niece made for me.
