Happy Thoughts

Apart from the crafty mess of it all, this makes quilting worthwhile:

Mum just called to say that Grandma’s been showing off her quilt to anyone and everyone, telling them that I made it for her. Yesterday, the nurses put it in the cupboard, but she got it straight back out again and had a nap. Grandma’s had more and more trouble with memory until now she needs people around to help all the time: little memories like gifts and the whereabouts of things are the very first ones likely to go holidaying. My brother and I bought her some pretty excellent Haigh’s soft centre chocolates, which she flatly denies having received but which disappear from the box periodically (cute, huh?). The quilt, though, she does not forget.

Now that I’ve got your attention with my heartwarming quilt story, would you like to tell my why my lemon buds are dropping off the tree? What is this?

 

Vintage Sheets, Redux.

This is a quilt for my Grandma’s 83rd birthday, which is today. She of the teaching-tiny-me-to-sew. Happy birthday, Grandma!

But first, an admission.  You all know how little I use the sewing machine, especially when it comes to patchwork and quilting.  I only started using it again when I started playing with vintage clothing patterns.  Well, maybe I was hasty.  You see — and wow, this is embarrassing when I think of how many of your quilty blogs I read, o crafty readers — I didn’t actually know that a person could quilt properly on a domestic machine.  Oh, sure, I’d quilted on mine, mostly straight line ditch quilting on low-stakes blankets for myself, but it was always a bit of a mess, and I thought that to avoid that, one had to pay a professional long-armer to do the job.  Not having too many hundreds of dollars just lying about, and enjoying hand-quilting anyway, I chose to do everything by hand.  Needless to say, quilts took years not days.

Well.  During an editing session for Vic Quilter, my co-editor Jan had much to say on the subject! So, I dutifully went out and bought a darning foot. The arrival of this marvellous new toy coincided with a delivery – of fifty gorgeous fat quarters of vintage sheet fabric from Oh! Fransson’s swap.  They had such pretty patterns, it would have been a shame to do anything much more complicated than cut them into large squares.  In less than a weekend, I had them pieced together, quilted, bound and delivered.  Oh, the bliss of scribbling waves of quilting stitches all over pretty patchwork!

Some more photos, if it interests you — Mum and I binding:

The quilt itself:

And the Masculine Quilt Advisor getting comfy while he has the chance:

I didn’t get a shot of Grandma’s room in full, because the sun was all wrong, but she has a big window onto the garden where she’s living, and I’m really pleased with the way this quilt brings the garden inside.

Only problem – Mum’s just put in an order for two more, so I have to find some more pink and green sheets from somewhere! Still, when Mum and Dad keep welcoming us home with this kind of thing, I have no real issue: