More Treasured Gifts! 1953 Chevy

I stitched this to give to my hubby for Christmas a few years ago....

This turned out to be an even harder task to create than the 56 Chevy that I made for my brother-in-law. (see the post before/below this one for the story of Mark's 56 Chevy)

My husband's '53 Chevy has been in his family since...well, since 1953.  It used to belong to his uncle and then his uncle passed it on to my hubby way back when he was just a teen.

It still runs well, but my husband had/has it stored away during the winter.  Unfortunately, winter is when I needed to see it so that I could sketch it and draft the pattern.  

I didn't want my husband to know what I was going to do, so I would sneak down to his garage and try to uncover his car enough to get glimpses of the car details.  He has this car stored in the very back corner of his very big garage.  It's covered and has lots of other equipment surrounding it.  I had to take pictures of small sections of the car and then compare it to the few online pictures of that model year.

The one error in design is the tires.  They need to be big white-wall tires.  I will fix that....someday.  I can't be faulted with that though since hubby had so much stuff surrounding that darn car, it was impossible to see those tires!  :)

So, just as I did Mark's 56 Bel Air Chevy, I sketched the car to the size that I wanted the wall-hanging.  Then I had the daunting task of drafting the pattern for it.  

I had some shiney silver vinyl that I wanted to use for the chrome on the bumpers, the hubcaps and that little side panel by the back tire.  Once I had it stitched on though, I ripped it all back out because it just didn't blend well with the wool.  The silver/grey wool worked better.

My fav feature about this car is again, the door handles and lock, stitched with metallic threads, but also that radio antennae.    

One other thing I should add...my husband had just retired when I made this so he was home most of the time.  I had limited time during the day to make this.  

So, I would wait until he went to bed at night to work on it.  I sometimes stayed up until the wee hours of the morning stitching because once I get going on a big project like this, it's really difficult for me to shut down.

I've lots more projects from the past to show, but that's it for now.

So much sadness today with the bombings in Belgium. 

Prayers for those have been personally affected by this horror.

I've found that being kind to those who are hateful can make a difference.

 I'm afraid that kindness to those who are evil would make no difference. 

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness"  ~ Dalai Lama