quilt

Lily is a short-timer. I started learning a new sewing skill (English paper piecing) without a clear project in mind, and decided I'd figure it out as I went along. I took a bag of little paper hexagons with me to my vacation in Minnesota, figuring I'd do a few flowers.

I did a LOT of flowers. It turned out to be incredibly easy, and very portable. My friends' kids wanted to watch TV? Sit down and sew a couple of flowers. In the middle seat on the last plane home? Sew flowers. It worked out well.

Sometimes, sweetness strikes you when you least expect it. As most of you undoubtedly know by now, I held a quilt contest; the person who had the closest guess to Jeff's raw hospital bill at UAB won a quilt. Susanna, a co-worker of mine, won it by guessing $550,000, getting her just a little over $7K away from the true number.

I fully expected to be constructing a new quilt for her, but she asked if she could have an antique, instead. She said that she'd never gotten a quilt when she married, and that her tenth anniversary was coming up this summer, so why not make it a real antique? She loved Depression-era quilts, and quickly settled on a Depression-era double wedding ring quilt, preferably with feedsack fabrics.

Stargirl is a thank-you quilt, for a set of events I haven't been able to bring myself to write about publicly. The severity of Jeff's accident is known to nearly everyone at this point, I think, and I don't have to belabor the point. He is injured, gravely injured, and whatever recovery he is able to make will take a long time.

Jeff had always wanted Crystal and me to become friends. He picked a crappy way to do it, but he did make it happen.

Crystal and Jeff are closer friends than most people realize. She beat me to the hospital on the night we finally learned that Jeff was in UAB, and left his side as little as possible until he was transferred to Huntsville. She's one of the few people that Jeff would consistently respond positively to, early on, and since he's become conscious again she is someone he asks for, and clearly trusts.

For those of you who are my seven regular readers of domesticat.net, this post isn't for you; this post is a rehash of some previous posts, plus photos, for the Quilt Bloggers' Festival. It's for a lot of people who didn't see this little quilt while it was in progress.

I'd like to introduce you to a pattern that is almost never seen in quilting. It's so similar to what you're accustomed to that it'll take you a moment or two to recognize that something about this pattern is off, and different:

['Finality']

Another rescue quilt top! Most of the quilt tops I see on ebay don't interest me that much. Most of the ones I can afford are one of these:

• standard-country-quilts
• cheap-and-disintegrating
• beautifully made and priced accordingly

Every now and then, you get lucky; Primrose was grossly mislabeled and available for a beautiful price as a result. This quilt falls into another category altogether: damaged but salvageable.

['Chomped: the before shot']

Someone took scissors to the bottom of this quilt. I want to hope that it was done because something happened to it, but I think it unlikely; most of the cutting was done on diamonds of a particular color, so I think someone cut into it for crafting purposes.  (To which I say, why why why?)

This is another quickie baby quilt — quickie because this little girl was just born, and babies don't stay babies for long!

This quilt is an odd combination: the gentle florals of Liberty fabric with the unusual patternings of mathematical tilings. Okay, it's odd to anyone else but ME. Here's the pattern I'm using to make this quilt:

& Roses">& Roses" title="Tiling pattern for Tea & Roses" class=" flickr-photo-img" height="365" width="500" />
['Tiling pattern for Tea & Roses']

I got word early this week that one of my stepbrothers' wives had had her baby, and shock of shocks, a girl at last! When my mother remarried a few years ago, she came into the marriage with one grandson; Paul came into the marriage with FIVE grandsons. Needless to say, the prospect of a granddaughter has everyone excited.