I love to start quilts almost as much as I love to finish them. I love every part of quilt making. The picking the pattern. The choosing of fabrics. The cutting out of the quilt. The piecing of the quilt. And finally, the quilting or tying of the quilt. It’s called a comforter when a quilt is tied. At least that is what my mother always told me. It’s only called a quilt when the fabric, batting and backing are sewed together in tiny quilt stitches.
If you have ever made a quilt, you understand what I am talking about. And once you make one, you almost always have to make another one and another one and another one.
Right now I am working on a certain quilt that I have made before called Grandmother’s Fancy. I found the pattern in a quilt magazine I bought almost twenty years ago.
I use to buy this magazine all the time. I don’t know if it is still sold. It always had some interesting stories about quilters and at the back it had several of the quilt patterns that were shown in the magazine.
As you can see, I wrote Grandmother’s Fancy on the front so I would know this particular pattern was in this particular magazine. I have done that a lot through the years when I wanted to keep a pattern I found in a magazine.
And I write myself notes in the pages while I am working. Sometimes I write something I have heard on the radio or some advertisement I am interested in. My quilt magazines became sort of diaries through the year.
This magazine was good about showing how to put each quilt together. This may look hard to some, but it’s really an easy pattern. I would love to make one for each of my grandchildren, but the ones I am making now are for our bed. As it’s a king size I haven’t made very many quilts for it because it’s getting harder for me to quilt a big quilt on my home sewing machine. I may have to hand quilt these.
This was the first quilt I made from this pattern. I made it many years ago and it’s been used and washed several times and is beginning to get the vintage look I love in quilts.
It is on our guest bed in our guest bedroom. We haven’t had too many guests to stay here for a while and the bedroom started to look like a storage room until this week when I put everything away and cleaned the room and made up the bed again. I’m glad I did because I like how it looks. Maybe now I will have guests again.
This is a king size version of the pattern. I plan on finishing it this year. It’s on the top of my list of quilts to finish. Because…….
I’ve made enough of the blocks to make yet another one. One that will be more Spring like. I really love making these blocks.
I still have a few more I want to make before I decide what fabric I want for the borders and sashing. I’m thinking I’ll use some shirting material for it. I’m reading a book right now about some people during the WWll times and one of the women in it is a seamstress and she said, “Textiles are a woman’s delight.” I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. I delight in textiles.
David took a week off for his birthday and we thought we might do something, but we haven’t done a darn thing except go out to eat a couple of times, but that was all right with both of us. It’s been so cold all I want to do is stay in where it’s warm and work on quilts or knit and David has been working on our taxes and almost has them done. I’m so glad he likes to do that because I would be lost if I had to do them. I’d have to hire someone to do my taxes even though I actually took a class on taxes in college. A lot has changed since then.
We did go see our two youngest grandsons in their orchestra concert. Children from all the elementary schools, middle schools and high schools in Bloomington joined together to put on the concert. Each class had a song to play and at the end the whole group played together. It was awesome. The middle school group played a song from Star Wars and their bows were lit up and they turned down the lights and it was just wonderful.
This was his debut performance on his cello. Our youngest grandson. He’s so cute and funny.
For some reason the picture is sideways, but that is his brother smiling. This is his second year of cello and I am proud to say he has signed up for orchestra in middle school next year. I love that they are learning an instrument. My biggest regret of my life, and I have very few regrets, is that when I had the chance to take piano lessons I refused to take them and my poor mother could not talk me into it. Now, when I hear our church pianist play, and she is wonderful, I think to myself that could be me up there if I had listened to my mother. I can pick a few songs out on the piano and can read music a little, but not like I could have if I had taken lessons. I did take violin lessons when our boys took them. I was in the same class with them at one time and I could play somewhat well, but I found that getting the time to practice was getting harder and harder and violin fell by the wayside. I gave my violin away. Now I wish I had it again.
David and me and the parents of our grandsons, our daughter and son-in-law. Sara took piano for eight years and violin for a couple of years. Jeremy plays the drums. Out oldest son played cello in orchestra and our youngest son played the Bass. I use to haul them to class every week, the bass bigger than our son until he grew into it. They both were pretty good. I guess you could say we are a musical family.
What have you been up to? Do you have any projects you are enjoying these Winter months? Here’s to musical grandboys and quilts to made. Bye.
