Border Flowers

Dear Blossom of Friendship Followers,

I've sequestered myself away at the cabin this week to work on borders and border flower for Blossom of Friendship. This quilt is going to be exquisite! I've been taking pictures as I go to create a tutorial devoted solely to the creation of the sashing, and borders. I'll post it in the next couple of weeks.



The first thing did was sort all of the remaining fabric. As you can see, I have plenty of fabric left for the remaining border flowers. It helps to display it like this, so I can put colors together much easier than when it is stored in plastic bags.



Over the past eleven months, I've been making some flowers while I was doing the baskets. Each month, more and more beautiful fabric was delivered to the shop that I incorporated into the final blocks and border flowers. Not all of my flowers are going to be a carbon copy of each other. There is such a variety of colors in nature that I can't make the same flower the same way eight times over. You may choose to and that's fine....remember it's your quilt.




Here is a snapshot of one section of the border. This arrangement will most likely change as I place the border next to the blocks that I've sewn together. This is a dynamic process that will continue as I keep making more and more flowers.

The following Smilebox is a closeup of each of the flowers that I've done so far. Some of the flowers I have four of and some only one.....and then there's the reverse of each one too!

Sit back and enjoy the tranquility of the presentation. It's just a taste of the contentment and beauty that surrounds me while burning my fingers on my Hobbico applique iron!

Make a Smilebox postcard

As always,

Lynn

Ten Days Before...........

Dear Blossom of Friendship Followers,

Yesterday, we bought a crate of peaches at Costco. (I could have said we bought them at our local Farmer's Market in downtown Livermore)...but Costco it was. Some friends are coming over for dinner tonight so I decided to make a fresh peach pie.

I turned to my extensive cookbook collection, (I need all the help I can get), and the first book I opened was The Modern Family Cookbook with a copyright date of 1947. The book belonged to my mom and I can remember seeing it in her house for years. I turned the cover over and saw that my father had given it to my mother and had written three little words, "Ten days before....." It's a good thing my mother had written in (wedding) so that I would know what my father was talking about 61 years later!

Yes, this was Harley's gift to his bride-to-be, Edith in 1948. I turned to page 624 to a recipe for Fresh Peach Pie. The page had been turned down and it was comforting to know that my mom had made this very same recipe....who knows how long ago.

So I started making the pie, first slicing the peaches, then rolling out the dough on the enamel top on my Hoosier. The top always stays cool and is an excellent surface for rolling cookies and pie crusts.

The whole time I was making the pie, I was thinking about my parents. Then I started thinking about how our lives and life stories are interwoven like the lattice on the pie.



While it was baking (wish you had smell-o-vision) I was writing this posting.



Today, I made a pie. Not just any pie, but a pie from of an old family cookbook given in love. I also felt that it was a gift from my father for me to enjoy 6 decades later.....even though it was just "Ten Days Before."

As always,

Lynn

Feathering Your Nest

While working on the border flowers for the Blossom of Friendship quilt the other evening at the cabin, I decided to turn on TV. We have basic cable and summer reruns were the only bill of fare available. I knew I’d been in the woods way too long when I found myself watching The Natural History of the Chicken. (I guess as opposed to the Un-Natural History of the Chicken?) If that’s not bad enough, I watched Ferrets: The Pursuit of Excellence. It wasn’t what I call riveting television, but the History of the Chicken was actually quite interesting. Did you know that a hen will pull out her own feathers to line the nest to make her chicks more comfortable?

So let me digress quickly. I keep a little journal of blogging ideas. Of course I scribbled down the names of the two shows on PBS…..I could never make that up! My journal also contained the words; bird nest, graduation, weddings and Relay for Life. Now how is she going to tie this altogether you ask?

A family of sparrows set up housekeeping in my wreath on the front door of the Livermore house and to our delight; we had four little blue eggs before we knew it. We guarded the four little eggs as vigilantly as the mother. We didn’t let the mailman deliver mail through the slot in the door. He put the mail in an In Between Stitches bag on the gate. We didn’t use our front door…we came and went through the garage. The four little eggs hatched on Mother’s Day and then the hatchlings flew the coop shortly after that. Now we have FIVE little blue eggs in the nest. I think this set will be born on Father’s Day.

At the cabin, also by our front door, we have a nest of Stellar Blue Jays. We’ve heard little chirps, so we know there are little ones in there, but we can’t see how many.

Just as the birds from the four little eggs left the safety of that nest, this is the time of year when graduating seniors are leaving the safety of high school and heading to college. College graduates are leaving their old stomping grounds for the work force. And yes, even my little twin granddaughter’s are leaving the safety of Kindergarten for 1st grade. How do we make this transition easier? We make quilts to “feather the nest.” We make T-shirt quilts to remind the recipients of their past accomplishments. We make quilts to adorn a new dorm room or apartment. We make quilts for the bride and groom and their new home. We make quilts for donation to Relay for Life. We make quilts for our friends and family to take with them to chemotherapy. We make quilts to be a constant reminder that we are wrapping our loved ones in our affection. We make quilts as a reminder of what is important in life. Home, Love, Friends and Family.

I always ask customers if the quilt they are making is for them. Nine times out of ten the answer is, “No, I’m giving it away.” What a wonderful, caring, group of people you are.

Here’s to you and “feathering your nest.”

As always,
Lynn