Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt

I have this great quilt top.  It is super old.  It is bright and cheery.  It makes me smile.  However, it needs to be finished!!  And because it is all lovingly hand pieced, it seems to be crying out to be hand quilted..

I love the movement in this picture.  It was such a pretty sunny day, however a bit windy.  I love it against the white aspen and blue sky.

So here's the story:  My grandmother (FarMor) had Alzheimer's disease and we cleaned out her house after she moved to a nursing home.  This would have been about 1990 or so.  She passed away in October, 1992.   When we went through her things, this quilt top was in the bottom of a trash bag up in her attic.  It was almost thrown out.  Anyway, since I am the family seamstress, I became the new owner.

The mystery:  My grandmother never really sewed.  She was a knitter. A knitter extraordinaire.  In fact, she taught lots of people how to knit.  Back in the day, May D&F was a marvelous department store, with their main store downtown on 16th Street.  It had this really cool part of the building that was designed by IM Pei, and it was this modernistic parabola shaped building.  Also, there was a skating rink there, sort of like the Rockefeller Center in NYC.  Sorry for the rabbit trail.  May D&F  had a yarn department (hard to believe) and she was their knitting expert.  She sat there knitting, and people would bring in projects for her to help with and also give classes and lessons.  She was the May D&F knitting guru.  Sometimes she finished things for people.  You know, they would knit the front, back and sleeves of a sweater and then not have a clue what to do with them, and she would finish it for them.  She got paid in some interesting ways, for instance a cake, some pickles and jams, etc.

It is our best guess that someone gave her this quilt top in payment for some work she did.  She never told any of us, and I have no idea how she thought it would get finished or what she would do with it.

Second part of this story is that in 1995, at my 20th high school reunion, I met a former classmate who was doing quilting.  She had been a peds nurse for Kaiser, and so she had actually worked at some point in after hours care with Ted.  But she had been diagnosed with MS and was working much less, and doing quilting in her days off.  So, I gave her the quilt and she was going to finish it.  But I never heard from her again.  Every few years I would try to find her, send a letter to the last address I had, etc.

Then I started doing some quilting, and really getting more interested in quilts.  A year ago I began in earnest to find her.  Then one day I got a call from her, answering my last letter.  It was pretty sad, her husband had just died of alcoholism, her mom was starting to fail, and her MS was pretty severe.  Needless to say, she hadn't worked on the quilt.  She wasn't sure where it was, somewhere in her mom's attic.  But after a year of each of us trying to get our schedules to meet up, I went to her house this week and picked up the quilt.

PHEWWWW....  Long story but I am really excited now to have it.

The reason that in this last picture the quilt isn't blowing all around like crazy is that I was standing behind it, holding it down.  Annika took the pictures with her new digital SLR that we gave her for Christmas.

So, now I need to pick out a fabric for the back... I think I will do a pieced back, maybe 3 blocks of solid with pieced rows in between or something like that.  I will never be able to match the fabrics, so I need to just blend/contrast sort of.  And I guess I need some sort of frame or something.  There are these square ones I have read about, Q-snap frames, and they are square and laptops.  The old fashioned laptops :)

I am going to make a small table runner and hand quilt it for practice.  Hopefully I will have it ready to take with me next week to the Broadmoor so I can do some handwork there.

Here are a couple of pictures Annika took on the trip she took with Ted and the Ptarmigans earlier this month.  I think she is doing a great job with her camera.  She has a very creative eye!!!

Sleep well,

Karen

My heart is full

Tonight I was downstairs with Ted, cleaning for the Messick's arrival, and Annika came down in tears, well really sobbing.  I thought her bird had died or something.  She said she had just deleted a FB post she had just written.   She had posted it but then somehow removed it. I didn't know what the big deal was, but I went up and tried to help her figure out how to retrieve it.  She said that it was really long, and she couldn't rewrite it.

We called Eric, and he didn't really have an idea.  But when we went to look at my computer, my FB was open, and there it was.  She had posted it and it was still on my wall.  We quickly cut and pasted it, and all was well with the world once again!!

So, here is the post, and you can see why she was upset.  It is really an amazing testimony, and my heart is full of joy, knowing that she did this completely out of the fullness of her heart with love for her Savior.

You know about superheroes that can fly or shoot death rays or freeze anything in sight. Well, I have the ability to live forever. No, I'm not talking about never growing old, but being able to be with God for eternity in Heaven. This blows my mind that God, my father would love us ALL soooo much that He sent His ONLY son, imagine, your only son leaving you and going down to hang out with a bunch of sinners, but Jesus loved us and he died a SINNERS death, nailed to a cross up on a hill. He did this to forgive our sins so we could live forever with Him in heaven. Just think about this, every sin we have ever committed, if it be the big ones or little, he died for all of them and all of us. It just blows my mind that someone could love me, and everyone on his world so much, and all because He wants to see us live up with him forever and ever and ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But we don't just get this gift for being human, we must BELIEVE that JESUS did ALL of that for you and me, and you must know that He loves you and you have to WANT Him to be in your heart so you can have the eternal gift that I am blessed to have, an ETERNAL life with our father, our Lord and Savior, God in Heaven, Jesus Christ. It still blows my mind at how much God has done for us and how much He has created, but I believe in Him with all my heart, and if you believe this too, why hesitate to tell the world, if you had the answers to a test you would use them right? Well you have the answer right in front of you, it's Jesus Christ! Come on man! Stop wasting your life and begin it, with God by your side. God wants you, go out and find Him. Ok I'm done with my rant :) God Bless ♥

Foxfield Fourth of July

Here's life in a small town.  We have our own Fourth of July parade, and Annika and Ted were both in it today.  Our town is 1 mile square, and sandwiched in between larger suburban areas of the greater Denver area.  But we try to maintain a rural environment.

So everyone lined up at 10am, and my parents and Ted's mom and I went up to watch the festivities.  

 Boy Scout Color Guard led off the parade.  I wish there had been some great parade marching music.  We all stood up and they saluted us.  My dad had his Korea War Veteran ballcap on.  Lots of people told him thanks for his service.  He loved it.  I am pretty sure my sister gave him that hat, so thanks, sis!

 Following next was the lawn tractors.  There's Annika, and Ted is escorting her on his RED roller blades, haha.   That dad in front of them is pretty styling with that big wig ;)

 There's Annika, with her itty bitty tractor following behind...

 She is so ready to drive.  Driving the tractor on the street, getting too close to driving for this mama.

 I LOVE that all these families had worked on little floats and were enjoying the 4th together.  I think there were more people in the parade than there were watching.  

 Everyone was throwing out candy and beads, even to those of us with no kids with us.  So Dad was busy the whole time picking up stuff...  I scored some tootsie rolls and tootsie roll pops!  WooHoo...

 One of the political floats.  T-Bone is running for Sheriff.  They are promising block parties every week and no more coyotes.  They have my vote!!

 Next were all the cars.  Old cars, cool cars, cruizin in Foxfield!!

 GTO!!!

Then the horses.  Oh, and we had a family with their goat, with a cute little red, white and blue coat on, watching the parade next to us.

Pretty horses!!  

Then we all congregated at "The Parade House" for an awesome barbecue.  Hamburgers and hot dogs, and tables full of salads, chips, desserts!!!  

 Ted even let us practice our face painting on him.  What a Dad!!!

 Mormor, Grandpa, Grandmawanna, and Ted, enjoying the shade and the food.

The Food Barn!

So that's how we do the Fourth here in Foxfield.  Tonight, we are going to church, for the first annual Fourth of July Festival at MHC.  Annika and I are going to do face painting, and there will be bouncy houses, etc., and Chick-fil-A dinner and we are going to watch the fireworks from Highlands Ranch.  I am sure it will be a huge success, our first big community outdoor event at our new church campus.  

Happy Fourth of July to you all. 

Thank you, Lord, for giving us this amazing country, for guiding our Founding Fathers 235 years ago in establishing this country, and for the freedom we still enjoy, freedom to worship and freedom to live our lives and raise our families according to your ways!