An Actor's Life For Me - Surprise Project II Revealed

So you may recall that there were two surprise projects and I've only revealed one so far.  Well here's Surprise Project II - this quilt called 'An Actor's Life For Me' is for my second son, Joe, and is for his graduation also - MDrama (Hons) Drama & Theatre Studies. Joe has also been studying for four years, Years 1, 2 & 4 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England and Year 3 he studied at UCSD in San Diego, California.  We have had many fab trips down to Canterbury over the years, which is such a beautiful part of England and we were really excited to visit him out in San Diego for a wonderful holiday last year.

The Graduation Ceremony was held at the spectacular Canterbury Cathedral, full of all the pomp and ceremony this venue is worthy of and afterwards we headed over to the Grove Ferry Coaching Inn at Upstreet for lunch with Joe's course mates.  The weather was pleasantly sunny which was most welcome in the middle of a very wet English summer.

Joe also received a generous cheque from Gran and from us his Graduation Quilt.  Here're some photos of him seeing his quilt for the first time (though he did admit to having his suspicions about receiving one as he's an avid reader of my blog and had put 2 + 2 together :) ).

And here's more photos of the quilt itself - and I'm thrilled to announce it was another great hit :)

For this quilt I wanted to include fabrics that are drama and acting related - both theatre and movies, I also wanted to make reference to Joe's time spent in both England and America.  I chose 10 fabrics: drama face masks; costume moustaches; 2x film negatives; 2x film reels; movie admission tickets; movie genre text; and finally 2 fabrics of the Union flag and the Star Spangled banner.  I placed the fabric in 5 horizontal bands of varying width on each side balancing the weight of the colours and designs and placing the country flags on opposite sides of the quilt.  Across the lower front right, I created a solid black section and machine embroidered Joe's name, degree and study dates.  The quilt is bordered and bound in solid black which pulls colours from each fabric and brings the quilt together as a whole. 

The quilting is straight line diagonally set squares creating a 'diamond' design. I used black thread for the machine embroidery and this stands out particularly well against the many white fabric backgrounds.

I named the quilt 'An Actor's Life For Me' as that has been Joe's dream since he could first dress himself- always dressing up as some character or another and putting on puppet shows and plays.  I have been the proud mum many, many times at Joe's performances: acting, singing, playing guitar and reciting poetry and I have laughed over and over when my husband, Simon, has been fooled by another of Joe's many accents and voices on the phone.  We have also become very used to having people come over in restaurants and on the street to point out how much Joe looks like Hugh Grant - just a smidgen of HG's success would be very welcome I feel and I think the world's ready now for a new, younger version!

I hope to have the opportunity to be there for much, much more and to see all Joe's dreams come true for him.  I once asked him what his backup plan is and he told me that he doesn't have one because he has to believe he can do it - it struck me then how just how determined, dedicated and right he is.  Don't forget Joe that I want a mention in your future Oscar acceptance speech ;) x

Related Posts:
Wherever I Lay My Hat - Surprise Project I Revealed

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