April Quilt Finish: Vintage-Style

Doing our part to flatten the curve, we're continuing to stay at home. Our only grocery store run was after 25 days of quarantine, and now we're on day 10 since the last grocery store visit. Ten days ago, Dan went to the grocery with a list of more than 40 items. The only thing he couldn't get was yeast. Our pizza-eating days are limited.

Last week I spent 1:36 on FaceTime with Tay, guiding him through making apple spice cake. On Monday, our daughter Jill's birthday, Dan guided Tay through making chicken tetrazzini... with said birthday girl's help. Celina baked a birthday carrot cake.

Knowing Celina would be baking that cake, and also knowing I couldn't stand at a card counter endlessly picking up and putting down greeting cards to find just the right one, I made Jill's birthday card with scraps of fabric and a little free motion quilting.

After four months, and long hours spent sitting in my aqua chair under my Slimline floor lamp, I finished hand quilting my Grandmother's quilt top.

In this flat shot you can see precisely where I modified the borders. The quilt top had only three borders and no extra fabric could be found in Grandma's stash. That's probably why it was left as it was. So I removed a border, and redistributed it with a new reproduction fabric. 

Though my hand quilting isn't visible - small X's stitched at one-inch intervals - the combination of random stitches and the puffiness of Quilter's Dream wool batting worked perfectly to mask the imperfections in the hand-piecing. The quilt top did not lay flat! The quilt's poof-iness hides that.

All the backing fabrics are from my stash, and I pretty much used up every blue-blue print I own! You might guess, I'm not a "blue person." Aqua, yes; blue, no.

By my reckoning, between my Grandma's hand-piecing (though we will never know for sure if she's the person who pieced this) and my backing and hand-stitching, we made a pretty good team.

I'll make and add a label that tells this quilt's story. It measures 68" X 84".

Oh boy! I had a fun read with Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain. It's been a few months since a book engaged me like this one.

The story opens with 20-something Morgan who is in a North Carolina prison. When she's unexpectedly given parole, she can't quite believe her good fortune, nor fully grasp the conditions of her release - in only a couple months, restore an old post office mural by an artist named Anna Dale. We learn more about Morgan's past, her boyfriend and reason for her incarceration, and Anna's story. Her life is about a young woman alone, living her dream of painting, yet coping with a small town's prejudices about a female artist, and race. If you like a book about uncovering secrets, you will thoroughly enjoy this one.

Linda's score 4.5/5.0

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson was an engaging book based on a completely improbable premise: twins who degenerate into flames whenever they're upset or stressed. The author makes that fact totally believable while telling the story of Lillian who's living a dead-end life, and Lillian's best friend, Madison, who lives in wealth as the wife of a Kentucky senator. When Madison finds herself responsible for the twins, she hires Lillian as governess. Over several months of caring for the twins, Lillian discovers herself, and is surprised by what she finds.

The only reason I didn't give this book a higher score is because of language. Call me a prude, but I find vulgarity completely unnecessary. Lillian's foul language added nothing to my perception of her character.   

Linda's score 3.8.0/5.0

If you noted that I listened to two books this past week, and you suspect it's because I've returned to machine quilting, you'd be correct! I most often listen to books while quilting. Though I'm "over" working on this temperature quilt, I must finish!

On Tuesday, April 21, I made an assessment of it:

• The quilt has 378 blocks that are each 4" X 4".
• I have quilted 268 blocks; it's 70 percent finished.
• 110 blocks remain to be quilted.
• Each block takes approximately 15 minutes to quilt.
• If I quilt 6 blocks a day (1-1/2 hours), I'll finish quilting Friday, May 8.
• I'm going for it. 
• 💪

Linda