Looking back: Versoul guitar wall textile from 2012

It’s time again to share some treasures from my quilty archives with you. Today, I will look back to 2012 when I created a quilted wall textile for my husband for his birthday. He plays the guitar and loves the Finnish custom-made Versoul guitars by Kari Nieminen.

In other words, I made my husband a guitar:

The official name of this quilted piece is Pasi’s Versoul Henry Gold Leaf Custom. The guitar picture on it is based on a photo that I found back then on the Versoul website. I didn’t want to infringe on Kari Nieminen’s copyright for the photo, so before I even started, I requested and got the permission to use the photo for this purpose.

The making of this wall textile

I took a screenshot of the picture and pixelated it into as many pixels as I had calculated I could manage when each pixel would be represented by an approximately 2” x 2” fabric square. Then I printed out the pixelated image.

Luckily for me, this was an easy picture: black for the background and a variety of browns ranging from very light to very dark. (As my piecing progressed, I did discover a need for a few squares of rather light blue fabric.)

I pulled a selection of the most solid browns in my stash and cut squares out of them using my cutting zone – the bedroom floor:

There were around 20 different fabrics of varying shades and values of brown. During the process, I kept them in order from the darkest to the lightest. In other words, I already had an understanding of colour value – though I did not yet know to apply it to all my quilts.

On the printout, I drew a pencil line around a “nine-patch” – a square of 3x3 pixels, then concentrated on it and created its replica in fabric. When this was done, I wrote a number on the 3x3 square of pixels on the printout and the same number on a small piece of paper which I pinned the nine-patch I’d just made.

Because the blocks were all numbered, I didn’t have to store them in order or even work on them in order. This was important because I was sewing these in the sewing corner in our bedroom, and the whole project had to be a surprise for my husband.

In theory, this was a simple exercise – sort of like colouring a picture by numbers. I just had to keep track of the colour value, and it wasn’t always as simple. But I got the colourful blocks done and was able to sew them into rows in the numbered order.

Here you can see part of the pixelated image and a few corresponding blocks:

Even then, the project didn’t look like it was going to be a picture of a guitar. My husband had no idea what I was making!

But one evening, rather close to the deadline (his birthday), he was away and I was finally able to lay out the rows on the floor. I really hoped that together, they would look like the model picture. I was not certain that they would!

But what a relief: they did:

I only sewed the guitar part out of small squares and nine-patches, and the background is sewn of black strips. The picture looked pretty good even when it had not been trimmed yet:

And It looked even better when I’d added the borders (note that in this picture, the piece is upside down):

As a perfect finishing touch, my trusted longarmer friend Soile had purchased a music themed quilting pattern for this piece:

My husband was completely awestruck when I handed him this quilt at his big birthday party!

A bit of a delay followed

I confess that it took me nearly two years later to sew in its hanging sleeve. I managed to complete the task – my absolutely least favourite part of quilting – when one day, my husband said that this present felt similar than it would feel to get a bike that is missing the seat.

Finally, in April 2014, the Versoul guitar wall textile was complete and could be hung on the wall above our bed. And in December that year, I had completed a quilt that matched both the room and the wall textile:

Of course, our beloved kitty Sokeri was enjoying the bed quilt and making the picture cuter.

In 2022, the Versoul wall textile moved to our music room, where it is still hanging today:

Today’s reflections on this quilted piece

I’m proud of the idea and the execution. I couldn’t afford to buy my husband the real guitar, so it was perhaps second best to make him a copy. He can’t play it but it is a great acoustic element on the wall.

The process of making this item was exciting and fun. I enjoyed making it in plain sight but in secret. The fact that he didn’t notice anything unusual or ask me a single question about the project tells us something, perhaps, about his level of interest in my quilty makes.

The only thing I would change about this Versoul guitar wall textile is the join of the binding ends, which turned out lumpy. I’m better at bindings now – much better!

Details for “Pasi’s Versoul Henry Gold Leaf Custom” wall textile

Pattern: Created based on a digitised photo
Block: Nine-patch blocks sewn of 5 cm x 5 cm (around 2-inch) squares
Size: ~ 170 cm x 130 cm (~ 67” x 51”)
Quilting: Longarm quilted by Soile Kivinen at Töölön Tilkkupaja
Quilting pattern: Musical notes / Musiikkia korville
Backing: Beige quilting cotton
Binding: Self-made binding of the outer border fabric. Cut 6 cm wide, folded in half before attaching.
Finished: November 2012

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