When Your Husband Turns 60

We survived the weather without harm!  We had some strong winds and lots of rain but our power never went out and we had no property damage other than a few tree branches down here and there.  Two months ago, we had our house roof and the siding on the back and sides of our house replaced because hail damage.  With that insurance claim plus two others that we had over the last 4 years, I really didn't want to have to go through that again.  We were certainly lucky we didn't get the storm that was predicted for our area.  Unfortunately, those along the coast wern't so lucky. 


My husband is 4 years older than me and it's been really nice because his birthdays prepare me for the time that I reach his age.  He just had his 60th and that birthday has hit me hard.  We celebrated the day before his birthday, as a "last day of the 50s' " celebration.  I've started calling him "59" (instead of Jimmy) so that he will always be 59.

Sorry to offend those who are but gosh ... Sixty is OLD!

I'm getting used to it now and I've decided to enjoy my final 4 years of the 50s' before I hit the dreaded 60.
Anyway, I wanted to do something really special for him for this special day .

                                                                               This is what I made for him....

It's made completely with 100% wool with the blue hand-dyed to match his actual car. 

His actual car, a '53 chevy has been stored and sitting in his garage. His uncle was the original owner and my husband got the car from his uncle back in 1972 or so.

                                                    This wall hanging measures 10" x18" and GOSH, it was really difficult to do.

First of all, it was difficult because I could only work on it when he wasn't around....I wanted it to be a complete surprise for his birthday.  That's a problem, you see.  He's ALWAYS around now that he's retired.  Even if he's working outside, he's still in and out enough that I just didn't want to take a chance.  Sooo...

I waited for him to go to bed. 

He usually goes up around 11pm or so.  I'd wait until I knew for sure he was sleeping and then start working on it.  I worked on it for 4 nights until 3-3:30am every time.  The last night, right before his birthday, I stayed up until 4:30am to finish it.  It's easy to figure out how many hours it took me to make this ... I figure about 21 hours from start to finish.

It was also extremely difficult because I wasn't able to take a full profile picture of his car.  He has it stored in the garage, which means he has other things packed up against it.  I had to sneak into his garage when he wasn't around to take pictures of the different parts of the car that I could see.

I could only rely on internet pictures for the full side view of the car ..and those are difficult to find because this year isn't exactly a collector model year so there aren't many out there. 

So I kept sending him away on different errands so that I could get out to the garage to take pictures of car parts ...

He has the hood propped up so I couldn't even get the front profile.  I'll have to ask him why the heck that hood is propped up.

And then of course, if you prop the hood up, the trunk has to be up too!  I was quietly cursing him while taking these pictures ...I didn't want to stitch a car with the trunk and hood propped up! .... and he's going to be upset that I'm showing the inside of his man-cave garage.  It's like showing the world a picture of him in his underwear.  shhh.. don't tell him I'm doing this!

I couldn't even take aim to get the front bumper.  I held the camera down into a tiny space between the car and stuff and snapped. 

I managed to get a good picture of the taillights

I have about 20 other pictures of each and every car part and then drew up the pattern for the car shape as best I could.

Making the pattern for the car shape and getting it to scale size was the most time consuming.  Once I started stitching, it was just pure joy to see it all come together, stitch by stitch.  I really REALLY loved and enjoyed the challenge.

I so much missed hubby while I was making this and wished that he could've helped with the fine details.

I made my bro-in-laws, Mark's car for his birthday...

Jimmy helped me with this along the way, giving me suggestions and advice when it came to adding the details. 

The only thing that bothers me is the hubcaps.  I couldn't see the hubcaps on his actual car so I just put circles.  If I could've just got a glimpse of them, I could've put in more details.

Even without his help and advice, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 

And he was absolutely thrilled with it.  The look on his face when he opened it was worth every single minute of time that I spent making it. 

Now I'm wishing he owned more old cars so that I can do them ... he does have a couple Harleys ... hmmmm...

Happy Day everyone!