My Dad Makes Quilts!

My dad, John David Bond is 80 years young, a retired fitter and turner who can put his hand to anything.
When I took delivery of my first quilting machine back in 2001, a second-hand Gammill Classic, the truck arrived and it took Dad, my teenage son, DH and the driver to unload the various machine parts off the truck. They’re big heavy machines!

Not being so mechanically inclined, DH and son quickly made their excuses and the driver hit the road, leaving Dad and I to work out how to put the machine together and make it work. We managed to do that reasonably well considering we were working off an incomplete manual and, really, knew little about what we were doing.

The machine was usable, but I did experience more than the usual amount of problems. As I explained my difficulties to Dad he realised some components of the machine needed to be improved. Over the next four months Dad rebuilt and refurbished until finally my machine was running better than a new one. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

Several times during this ordeal, Dad had approached me with ‘quilty’ questions which I was only too happy to answer for him. I remember thinking it was great that he was showing an interest in my new found passion. One day, he said, “I’d like to give this patchwork a go”. It was then I realised Dad was more than just interested, he really did want to make a quilt.

Dad had never used a needle and thread and certainly he had never had the need to venture from his work bench to Mum’s old Singer. I knew he had more to learn than most beginners and perhaps I was biting off more than I could chew but he was obviously keen to try patchwork and I was keen for him to have a go.

I loaded up a project bag with a collection of plaids, checks and stripes from my stash, a rotary cutter, mat, ruler and a square Perspex template which, coincidently, he had made for me some time back for a project I was working on involving numerous flying geese.

I took the bag with me on my next visit and asked Dad if he would like to lend a hand with my next quilting project which I was keen to get underway. He agreed. I gave him a lesson in rotary cutting, showed him how to use the template to cut the squares and stressed the importance of keeping the plaids straight. My departing instruction was, “Cut as many squares as you can from the fabric in the bag!”

Next time I saw him and it wasn’t much later, he had cut heaps of squares, which he proudly handed over asking, “What do I do next?” All the stripes and checks were as straight as a die.

Dad’s colour blindness prevents him from distinguishing between certain colours such as brown and red or green and blue, so easier to work with light/medium/dark. Lesson two involved drawing a pencil line diagonally across all the light coloured squares and then pairing all the light squares with either dark or medium.

Lesson three was a big learning curve. I introduced Dad to my sewing machine. I gave him a lesson on how to sew a ¼” seam and while I quilted away on my new ‘toy’, he sat at my Bernina laboriously stitching ¼” either side of the ruled line on all the paired blocks. By this stage he had realised he was working on his own first quilt.

The lessons continued covering every aspect of making the quilt including visiting the fabric shop to find the best option for a backing fabric to the final steps of binding, adding a label and hanging sleeve, just in case he wanted to exhibit one day.

Dad was so thrilled with the end result and I was thrilled for him. He was an excellent student, we had some great father/daughter memories and these days, no one dare remove his quilt from his bed!