It's About the Journey

This is an old quilt from my childhood. No matter what cute matching bedspreads and pillow shams my mother made me (usually coordinated with curtains she made, too), I always wanted this quilt on my bed. On top. (no silly bedspread covering it up) I have no idea what my reasons were, but I well remember loving this quilt and spending endless hours looking at the various diamonds and counting the ones of each color and loving the fabrics. At the time, I thought my grandmother had made it, because she was always doing embroidery and she had given it to me, but I really think her mother had made it. I don't think she ever did any quilting. I have another quilt that her mother, my great-grandmother made, and it is really a scrap quilt - string pieced from various plaids and such.

A few folks have had questions about the quilt patis and the difference between them and traditional English paper piecing and also how they work, so I took a picture of some of the backs so you can see that a few sloppy backstitches do the trick. I included a pati on a square of fabric just to show what it looks like before you start wrapping and backstitching. The ones with bigger flaps on the back are ones I cut from a leftover strip I had that was 2 1/2" instead of 2" and I sure wasn't going to bother cutting off that other 1/2", so they're done with rectangles instead of squares.

It's been another hot day, and around lunchtime the black clouds made it almost night-time dark while the thunder rolled in the background. However, by the time the rain actually got here, it was much lighter, and the worst of everything appeared to go around us. I think we're set for stronger storm activity in about an hour or so. Who knows? This time of year it's pretty unpredictable. (this is looking over the barn roof at the first clouds)

I've made a trial run with a handy little tool - the Quick Starter. You use it to draw on the back of squares destined to become part of triangle squares. You get both stitching lines and the cutting line in between. I'm kind of copying a quilt done by Creative Little Daisy that I just fell in love with, using the Wee Play charm squares. When I get a few stitched, I'll take a picture of them.