A family treasure

My mother-in-law (who just passed away at the age of 90) made one last quilt almost 20 years ago. A couple of years ago she gave it to me for safe-keeping with specific instructions. Her wishes were that when she died all of the grandchildren's names were to be put into a hat and draw to see who got her quilt.

So, when she died last week, we draped her quilt over the casket. And later that evening at our house with most of the family gathered, we drew a name.

The state fair blue ribbon she won on this quilt even went with it to my niece's house. A real family heirloom!

Happy Thanksgiving

Gone but not forgotten

My mother-in-law passed away peacefully yesterday at the age of 90. She was a farm girl from a large family, an elementary teacher, a mother of four, grandmother of 18, and great-grandmother of 24 (plus one on the way). She was fiesty and energetic up until the past year, when the energy failed.

We'll miss you Natalie!

Look what came in the mail

Yesterday my mailbox had a soft squishy little package - and it contained this beautiful charm pack of Fairy Frost fabrics. The label on the back says "50 new colors"!!! Can't wait to take it apart to see all of the colors.

Thank you to Moose on the Porch for selecting me to win this lovely charm pack. Her Fat Quarter Stars Quiltalong has been such fun so far. Every other Tuesday a new block is posted. In between, she draws some winners from those participants who have posted a picture of their completed block in the quiltalong's Flickr group.

And thank you to MamaSpark for designing Block 3 and for providing this beautiful prize. I love it. Here is my finished block from that week.

Humility block is fixed

As I indicated in yesterday's post, I didn't follow my own rules about laying out my block pieces before stitching and trimming. So I had to purchase a little bit of extra fabric to fix my mistake. But I'm glad to say that the final result was very good.

We received the layout instructions for this Saturday Sampler this month. Granted, this is just the designer's layout and we can certainly create our own layout. My plan is to follow her basic layout with just a little change in the borders and sashing. And I bought the fabric I want to use for those borders and sashing so maybe over Thanksgiving weekend I can start to put the rows together. That way all I will need to do is add the last couple of blocks.

My humility block

I love this block! It is this month's Saturday Sampler block, so it is going into a sampler quilt. But I think it would make a striking quilt using just this block.

Most months I cut all of the pieces from the pattern, then lay them out on my ironing board or sewing table to make sure I have them all right. But not this month. I just started sewing . . . and guess what? I had made a major error with my pieces from the traditional colorway! Big enough that I had to run to the shop and buy a little more fabric to fix it. So my black, white, bright variation block is done first. I'll finish my traditional one later today. It has a new name and will now be called my humility block.

Christmas table topper

Finished the hand quilting and binding on this little table topper on Sunday. My daughter asked if I could make something for her to give as an exchange gift for a Christmas party. This is a simple pattern - huge flying geese and made from 3 fat quarters. And I did some simple hand quilting inside the goose triangles.

Check another small project off my TO DO list.