Aluminum Loaf

Badger's rack (bed) on the ship is essentially a twin-size bunk, so I wanted this quilt to be able to both lay there reasonably—decorating his living space—but also have him be able to use it as a blanket to curl up with. He tested out that idea with Makeshift and it seemed to work just fine (I don't think a man has ever been happier to have unfettered access to broadband Internet before; that's his freshly loaded-up iPad mini in the townhouse I rented for us during our week together in Seward).

So, it all began as many projects do with me: a journal entry (or ten) outlining the pros and cons, problems, concerns, issues, and any other sort of drivel that comes into my mind. Hey, it gets me where I need to be—we each have our own process. And I should mention, I actually completed this quilt long before I had even had the notion for the Cthulhu quilt that came after it, and for once I managed to keep a secret from my husband (something I am notoriously terrible at!) and didn't tell him about it. [It didn't hurt that we had very limited communication pathways during the weeks that I worked on it—I surely would have blown it otherwise.]

Choosing the fabrics was easy, the swirly silver waves on the simple gray cotton was the obvious starting point for the quilt, and many of the smaller bits I even had on hand from earlier quilting projects: the blue was from Mom's Scrabble quilt, the red was from Tania's elephant quilt, the black flower fabric was used in Kasia's pink-hair quilt, and the orange was purchased for my brother's quilt (which continues to languish at the moment, unstarted) but was also used to make the eyes on Dad's Cthulhu quilt. So really, of the six quilts I've now made, only the Ripley quilt isn't represented here in one way or another.

Then, I spent a few hours outside one evening with a ruler and tape measure, carefully collecting all the dimensions and doing calculations. Exhausting work for my brain, but I rewarded myself with a glass of wine, so all was well. And only one neighbor actually stopped square in their tracks and asked what the heck I was doing this time! LOL. I love that Martha! She's a crack-up.

I input the calculations into Adobe Illustrator (my map workhorse and very close companion of mine for more than a decade) and created all the attachable pieces. I cut them out one by one by one by one by one by one ... it went on forever! But in the end I had all the bits cut out, fused, re-cut, and bonded—and all onto the correct bits of ironed fabric.

Windows in the making for the curb side.

And all the darker gray bits for the curb side ... (see my note in the Intermission below and you'll understand why all these pieces are together: re-do!).

Lights! Orange lights in the making for the front of the Airstream! And then the red ones were created for the back. And then all over again for the other side.

Here are some of the bits for the street side of the quilt.

Here's one especially awesome thing about this quilt and our couch (gaucho): The quilt fit perfectly on the only surface (besides the floor I suppose) that would hold it. Here's what it looked like when I had all the pieces placed atop, before anything was actually sewn on.

I'm jumping ahead, but again, check out how once things were actually attached to the two sides, they fit perfectly—two-pieces-across—on the privacy curtain bar between the living space and the bedroom. This quilt was made to be made in this Airstream!

So, returning to our regularly scheduled program ...

Then I had to figure out how to best attach all those bits. I decided on an awesome stitch that looked like it would cover up the edges completely so they wouldn't fray in the wash, as well as hold strong for many years to come. And so began the sewing-on of bits ...

It took SO LONG to sew on all those windows using that thick, complicated stitch, but I love how they came out.

There was so much more measuring and math ...

I added a darker grey stripe along the bottom of the trailer just like it really has, and added the wheel wells, too.

And then the "chrome" strip that runs between the aluminum above and the grey below needed to be created and attached. I even sewed it to match the horizontal grooves in the real-world strip.

Then I decided to make the riveted door frame out of a piece of binding. I thought I could use what I call the Asterix stitch—cuz he put up with Obelix—to adorn it. Natch!

I needed a bit more bite so I added a long scrap of paper to the mix. All the better for the feed dogs to grab.

My theory worked and the paper tore away easily enough, leaving me with a long piece of "riveted" binding.

Getting the curve just right and sewing it on took a miracle, but it worked! Here's what came out of the experiment that night: Success!

I also used that same Asterix stitch to create the (curved) lines of rivets that run top-to-bottom and end-to-end along the Airstream.

Then, I took a break from the main parts of the quilt and figured out how to make the awnings! Always with using up every scrap! This batting remnant from the eggplant quilt got cut down to be used inside the awnings.

The smaller awning arms for the two sides (different lengths for each of course) were easy enough, but the awnings that run the whole span of the Airstream were almost five feet long on this quilt; that took some careful maneuvering. 

But I got it. And look at the cunning little blue pull-tab.  :)

So, much later (after the quilting was completed) I attached the awnings, but since I'm discussing them here, I'll add the relevant pictures to this section.

So, as an aside—or maybe by means of an Intermission if you are actually reading this—someone I know said that I should add more "screw-ups" to my quilting blog posts. Well, here's one: I thought I was going to be able to use the reverse side of the grey fabric (which was a nice solid grey, not some faded number), and had made all the original grey pieces in that fabric, but check out how it just disappeared into the sparkly fabric, not effectively showing off the particular component. I tore them out and went on the hunt for a darker grey. Believe it or not, grey is not a particularly popular color and it is actually incredibly difficult to match.

I worked and worked on the first side until all of the little bits were added and then I cut the shape out. Then, I had to start all over again with the other side (which is arranged in a completely different way, but thankfully, is lacking a [very difficult to sew] door).

After both sides were fully decorated with their accoutrements, I had to quilt them. Another set of almost-disasters occurred during this phase, but all the major ones were somehow averted.

The first sandwich began.

With something this big I knew I had to quilt top-to-bottom (a million times) and start from the middle. It was a major concern that the layers of the quilt sandwich didn't shift because I was working with less than a half-inch of wiggle room. Wiggle wiggle woo!

Even so, it barely fit rolled up in the crook of my machine. And I was very careful to quilt around every one of the elements, which meant I had to go back with different thread colors and quilt into those separately; all the black and dark grey bits got their own attention ... it felt downright Sisyphean.

I wanted to include all of the pieces that attach to the outside of the Airstream, so I had to create the logos. The tiny little logos. Crazy-town! Ours is an Ocean Breeze model, so it has an extra palm tree logo in blue and silver by the door (under the traditional International logo): Nailed it!

And the International logo sits by itself on the street side.

Two quick things I should mention that I realized about our aluminum home simply by making this quilt that I hadn't known before: (1) there's an International logo on the street side (cool), and (2) there's a grounded power outlet right next to my chair outside, where I have literally been sitting and said to myself (or maybe written in my journal), I wish there was an outlet out here! Well, there is! (Badger will have know this all along [duh!] and will laugh at me when he reads this clear lapse in aging brain power; he'll make an excuse for me though, and say that it must have looked like Cracker Barrel sign, lol.) 

So, the binding. SO MUCH BINDING! I needed more than 30 feet of it! And in two colors: silvery-grey for the body and the darker grey for the base. I was so glad that I had invested in a new iron before taking on this quilt. 

Ooops, not quite enough clips for the first side ... maybe I'll make another small investment in these useful grabby guys.

The "sunglasses" which wrap around the front of the Airstream were easy enough to add, but I had to put them on after the binding was secured so that they would show the illusion of "wrapping" around the silver shell, also, I gave them depth by adding some padding, just like they have in real life.

And then I had to devise a final solution: a fabric hinge to attach the two pieces of the quilt. I came very close to messing this up about a hundred times, and almost quilted the whole thing together in reverse—that's one of the main problems with too many exceptionally late nights in a row while on deadline: brain-rot.

But in the end, it all came out just fine. I decided not to attach the wheels as they seemed somehow dwarfed by the rest of the structure, even though I remeasured a number of times. I thought about making larger ones but they wouldn't sit right, so I just left them off—and now that just looks normal to me.

And so you have managed to make it to the end of this blog post (wow—thanks for reading/scrolling!). Here are two more views of the finished quilt: curb side and street side. These images may make the quilt look small, but really, for a badger, he has a significant wing-span.

Also, if you've seen the Cthulhu quilt post and the picture of my Dad peeking out from on top of it, this isn't a meme; Badger did the same peeking thing with this quilt before Dad even received Cthulhu (he was in the mail, winging it from Alaska to Maine at the time), and the two haven't seen one another's pictures (Dad will when this gets posted of course, and Badger will when he gets some good Internet again).

Happy Birthday my love ... I hope your makeshift Aluminum Loaf is keeping you comfy.
Can't wait to see you again.
Hugs, Mushroom