Finished The Blues

I made some small, sporadic progess on Grannys Garden (aka Bill's Quilt) in the past few months but, honestly, I spent more time planning my next moves than actual work on it.  Starting the day after Christmas, however, I've worked on it a little every day even if only to cut out more papers.  

Yesterday I finished the rest of the blueish flowers.  Yay!  They were a challenge because I don't generally love blue and have no blue purchased fabrics in my collection. Bill and I found some plaid shirts at the thrift store, but he only made a single petal from the blue and white plaid.  The rest of that cut up shirt got thrown away by others during our moves, so I paid another visit to the thrift store just before Christmas and found 2 blue-grey shirts to cut up and complete these.  

A goal is to use up ALL the hexies Bill made for this quilt.  He'd basted up 5 yellow plaid ones and had cut out the 6th, so I basted that one and will be stitching it together next.

The single light brown floral hexie was another challenge to figure out a flower home for, but I put it with 2 other fabrics I already had on hand and like it.  Two more of Bill's red hexies look at home with the split hexies I made for this split flower I think.  

Since it's Friday, I'm going to try to link up with a weekly "linky party"  called Finished Or Not Friday, hosted by Alycia Quilts.  

The Past Ten Years

Twelve years ago I decided to make an English Paper Pieced, aka EPP, quilt.  I discovered a blog called Life Under Quilts with some great tutorials and began stitching stars using 60 degree diamonds.  A fun thing about the blog was the author, Jessica, hosted a weekly "linky party" called Monday Morning Star Count, where followers could show off their own progress.  I really enjoyed the comeraderie and seeing each person's progress the past week, which was shared by including a link to their own blogs.  Their progress inspired my own, and eventually I decided I wanted to share my progress there too... so this blog was born.  I stitched and blogged very sporadically.

Five or 6 years ago my old neighbor Bill came to live with us following some upheavals in his life. He would need EVERYTHING to get back on his feet and into his own apartment again.  One day we found a big, heavy, vintage, hand stitched quilt at a yard sale for only $5!  It needed extensive repairs, so I showed Bill how to make large, also EPP, hexagon patches which we then stitched in place.  

I say "we" but it was mostly Bill.  He spent a lot of hours stitching on his quilt while Hat and I were at work. Shown above he is stitching one of the 1st hexies in place.  He chose that dark red because the damaged hexie he's patching over was dark red.  Throughout the repair process he chose fabrics that echoed the ones he was covering as closely as possible to honor the original quilt maker's choices.

Bill did a great job and eventually finished repairs.  I suggested he continue quilting by making a quilt from scratch.  At first he said "Definitely not.  I'm DONE with quilting!"  I ignored his protests and drafted up a pattern using more of the same size hexies.  

I printed it out and laid it on the table where he couldn't miss it. I mentioned that people spend big money on hand stitched quilts.  A week or more went by.  He diid a lot of TV watching and napping, but defiantly made a point of not stitching.  I caught him looking at the pattern a few times, but he'd quickly put it down if I noticed.  So stubborn!  Then one day he started looking in the fabric box... and next thing I knew he had cut some fabric and was stitching.  He said he was doing it for me. 

Not long later we found a nearby apartment and helped Bill move.  He continued stitching there and we got together twice a week for grocery shopping or a meal at our house over the next few months.  Then, quite unexpectedly, Bill died.  We found him seated on his couch with his TV still on and basted hexies on his small kitchen table nearby.  Since then, Hat and I both retired and moved from my big ancient house to his more modern house in another small town nearby.  I hadn't stitched for years but recently decided to start again.  I've decided to work on completing the one Bill started (hexie flowers) before completing the one I started (diamond stars).  The 8 1/2 flowers Bill completed (shown above) are easy to figure out where they go because he numbered them to correspond with numbers he wrote on the pattern. 

These green hexies are also obvious as to their intended use.  The remaining hexies I'm just trying to guess what his plans for them were.  

My darling daughter R stitched the 3 on the right together. :)

I Found It!

It's been about 10 years since I've been able to find this, my old blog.  I thought the whole thing was gone.  I'm writing this post just to see if it still works!

#26: The Star That Took Five Months To Make

I haven't posted in a hundred million years I know!  Well I have a good reason.  its because this star was the hardest star anyone could ever imagine making... um.. I was busy with some other things. Like eating. sleeping. Christmas, sleeping, eating.  Anyway I finished a star and have posted a picture so all of you can ooo and ahhh over its stunning beauty.  That's its real color, posing above on some not yet uncurled rhubarb that's bursting out of the ground practically overnite.

one minute earlier, and only inches away from the rhubarb, I tried taking a photo of the star with some daffoduls.  the daffodils look great, but the star's color was all wrong. I took the photo several times but still the fabric looked very blue..

see what I mean?  weird.


I did do a couple other things these past few months, and I cant give away every exciting detail but here are a few highlights:


Found an adorable doll bed plan at anawhite.com (lower left).  Hat & I made 2 beds (center) for the 2 granddaughters ("G" top left, "A" lower right) for Christmas.  I winged the mattresses & pillows and was pleased with how they turned out.  Also (not shown) made fitted sheets & pillowcases for easier cleaning.  Totally in love with a doll quilt I saw at quiltville.blogspot.com by Bonnie Hunter (top right).  It was nice to give something handmade for Christmas.  Even nicer that Hat & I worked on them together.  <3

January & February Hat went ice fishing (a lot).  He was even featured in a photo spread in the paper, made the front page.  I made homemade potato bread from scratch (a first), and a lattice top (also a first) pie from the last of cherries we picked & froze last summer.  No paparazzi for me so i'm covering it here ;)   Annnd one of Hat's ice fishing buddies fell through the ice and was then rescued... which also made the local paper including another photo spread.  Hat ice fishing photo plus Rescue photo (both above) credit thestarpress.com

Linking up with Jessica at LIfeUnderQuilts BlogSpot and her Star Count group. 
 



Star #25

It's green.  It's done.  The color works with the rest of the quilt but this fabric isn't one of my favorites.  I think the next one, maybe more, are also going to be "not exciting".  Trudging along.

Temperature in the 20's or less here in Indiana today.  I didn't feel like trying to find a scenic outdoor spot to photograph this homely creature, just tossed him onto boring beige carpet near a window and said "cheese"

Linking up over at jess's Life Under Quilts star count this week.

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.



Star 22

Back from a week of camping beside Lake Michigan.  It was great to get away for a bit.   Still  unpacking and further sidetracked by an urgent need to can beaucoup tomatoes from the garden.  They all got ripe while we were gone it seems.

We camped pretty far north... not in the Upper Peninsula but not far from it.   I basted the brown fabric with pine cone pattern while I sat under white pine and birch forests, listening to Lake Michigan waves roll in. 

Time to blanch a zillion tomatos :P

Linking up with Jessica at Life Under Quilts for her Monday Morning Star Count (yeah yeah, I know it's Tuesday evening... late is my middle name)

UPDATE: wrote this post on my iPhone. Worked ok except wouldn't display the picture... sooo I figured out what was going on with the computer, fixed it, then uploaded pic again.