Most of my quilts are not born of need, just of a desire to make them. One of the hobbies that my son has taken to is skateboarding. I started this quilt some some time ago. The background fabric was chosen to represent the concrete of the skatepark, and the fabrics, just something with texture.

Skateboarders like to customize. The trucks, wheels, and deck are the three main parts. My favorite has always been the variety in the deck and board art. It’s probably why when when I ran across the Kickflip quilt pattern in an old magazine, I decided it would be fun to put together. When I challenged my son to help pick some of the feature fabrics, we ended up with elements from old-school pop culture, asian strength and luck symbols, and what I call “muscle car” features. If you look close, some of the decks have dragons, tigers, flames, lightning, luck, and Dr. Who characters.

From a technique standpoint, since the intention of this quilt is for use by a teenage boy, including many rounds through the wash, anywhere that applique was called out, I did some math to fully peice the block instead. The deck blocks are definately large enough to display or highlight large print fabrics.

For the quilting, I chose “Catching Waves” by Christy Dillon. I like how the movement in the quilting works with the structure of all of the board decks.