Star 23 & 24

I've been working a lot of projects the last month or 2, barely any of it stitching tho.  Star 23 is the pinecone one.  I basted the pieces while on vacation back in.. uh.. August.   Star 24 though....


One of my sons has been a US Marine for 6 years now.  He went to Afghanistan as a machine gunner, then went to Okinawa to be a jungle warfare training instructor, then went to Florida to get a degree of sorts in bombs.  Now he's stationed in Japan again, and is an Explosives Ordinance Disposal Technician.  We all worry about him a lot, miss him even more.   I found a military surplus shirt just like the ones he wears and decided to make a star from some of the fabric.  This particular "digital cammo" pattern is exclusive  to the Marines.  If you look closely you can see the USMC insignia of Eagle, Globe and Anchor in the pattern.  I know this fabric isn't bullet proof, but it was hard enough to get a needle through that I can say with confidence I wont be making a whole quilt out of this stuff.

 

 

Other stuff: we finished refinishing a door.  I'm embarrassed to say how long it took to refinish it but... ok I will give you a hint: we started it just before Son left for bootcamp.  Yeahhh...  6 years ago.   This door is 140 years old, same as the house.   we painted the outside of it white to better resist the elements, the inside stained to its original color (but without the grime & scratches).  I love how the details are so crisp now.

 

 

 

Then there was the door hardware to clean and restore.  the simpler knobs and hinges are from some wooden screen doors we are also restoring.  The fancy stuff, including the "TURN" knob is from the door above.  That particular knob goes thru the hole in the center of the door and rings a doorbell inside it.  It sounds like an old fashioned bicycle bell. 

 

  Annnd... just in case we weren't already having enough fun with doors, we accidentally broke a window in a door that leads from the front porch straight into our bedroom.  For privacy reasons we need frosted glass in this one.  Rather than buy already frosted glass we bought a cheap sand blaster ($40) and Hat sand-blasted a new sheet of glass.  Here he is installing it in the bedroom-porch door.  Cant see anything?  perfect!    Neither of us had any sandblasting experience so we were pretty proud of how this turned out.   Lacy curtains on the inside give a lovely shadowy lace effect but I didn't get a pic of that for you... sorry!

Linking up with Jess at Life Under Quilts BlogSpot and her Monday Morning (or whenever we get around to it) Star Count group.