For Father’s Day 2020, I made a travel-themed lap quilt for my dad called “Remember When?” in recognition of the pandemic’s effects on my parents’ traveling. They are life-long world travelers and my dad is always planning their next trip. COVID-19 of course brought all plans to an unexpected screeching halt and sent them scrambling to return home from Brazil just in the nick of time.

This quilt was my first to use the One Block Wonder method for octagons. The OBW octagons make up the border while the central body of the quilt is a version of Around the Twist from the book Big-Print Patchwork by Sandy Turner. I’ve owned that book for years and had my eye on that pattern in particular for a long time. I was excited to finally find the right project to use it. I fussy cut fabrics featuring world maps, airplanes and luggage, U.S. national park symbols, and the iconic Eiffel Tower, all to symbolize some of the very many cities, countries, and continents my parents have visited over 50 years of travel. [For the uninitiated, “fussy cut” means to cut out a specific image from fabric, rather than cutting straight down the fabric as you usually would.]

The back of the quilt makes use of some additional octagons left over from the front and also showcases some of the travel-themed fabrics in their original state.