Mother's Day

So I know it's not traditional, but I tend to think of Mother's Day as May 5th.  It's the anniversary of my mother's death, and I always think of her a lot, but especially on that day.  So yesterday was a tough day for me.  Luckily I have my DH, who provided a lot of help and small distractions during the day to keep me from dwelling too much on sadness.  Then he invited a friend over to spend the evening with us, and we had a little fun playing board games and relaxing together. 

I did spend the early part of the day keeping busy cutting fabric and sewing, which is something my mother would have appreciated.  She was always the type to keep very busy - if she wasn't cleaning or working in her garden or cooking, she was crocheting or doing something creative.  She wasn't a quilter, but really appreciated the quilted items I made for her. 

So I worked on the sashings for my Northern Wilderness quilt.  I finished the last two pieced and appliqued blocks of the quilt earlier in the week:

These are the glacier and mountain blocks... I had saved the easiest two blocks for last because I'm lazy like that.  I knew I'd want to do the easiest ones at the end.  Turns out with the intricate trees on the glacier block, it wasn't the easiest, but it was close, and doing the two together was great because they used the same colors so doing them together, I had a lot fewer bobbin and thread changes to make.

I also found this little quilt that I'd made on retreat last year.  It is called "Sisters Nesting Dolls".  I bought the kit for it on my trip to Alaska at the QuiltAlaska/Rushin' Tailor shop... I think it was in Skagway, but I could be misremembering the town.  Anyway, I had finished the embroidery on the quilt and lost the pattern, so I wasn't sure what to do with the border fabrics - how wide to cut the strips, so I emailed the shop and they emailed me the information.  I just trimmed the block, and am working on borders now.

I am hoping to have at least the first borders on before Wednesday when I go to my weekly sew-in with my mini-group.  Then I can put the final borders on there.  The outer border fabric has nesting dolls all over it, so it will be very cute!

Once the Alaska quilt is done, I will be down to two appliqued BOMs to work on each month - a much more manageable than working on three, especially since the Woodland creatures blocks are very detailed and intricate.  My last kit was short a little fabric so even though I've partially done the block, I have to wait for my replacement fabric to finish the applique.  The shop was very nice about it and promised to send me the piece with my next block, so I'm looking forward to that. 

I've heard some horror stories about by-mail BOMs from some shops and them not replacing short or missing fabric.  But I have to say that Quilting by the Bay was very nice about it and even offered to mail the missing piece immediately, but it seemed silly for them to spend extra money on shipping when they are going to be shipping me another block in a couple of weeks anyway.

Anyway - I hope you are looking forward to the REAL Mother's Day and enjoying your own quilting journey.