Second Wind

Good morning, my friends. It's been less than 24 hours since my last post, and so I don't have much to tell you this morning. When I left you yesterday afternoon, I was surprisingly tired after our trek to the farmer's market. I was gearing up...or maybe I was winding down...to take a nap. When I woke up, I felt quite a bit refreshed. 

Heading into the sewing room, I spent some time finishing off the top border for The Story of My Day. Sadie kept me company.

The border was about half finished. I still needed to make three more windmills and do a little more piecing to finish it off. I started with these two windmills.

When the top-stitching on those was finished, I could sew the right half to the left half...

And then it was ready to be sewn to the top of the quilt.

Yay! Now, there's just one border to go. When I head into the sewing room today, this will be my only reason for being there. I've been working at this for a long time, and I'm more than ready to have it finished. All the remains is the bottom border...this one:

There's a little less piecing, but about six windmills. They're more time consuming than you might think. It's doubtful I'll finish this today, but tomorrow wouldn't be too much to expect.

Also, I'm making progress on April's block for A Year in the Garden. I expect I'll finish this tomorrow or the next day.

Having that close to a finish, I'll need to trace out the first block(s) for Le Jardin. Mr. Random selected this as my next project back in March. At the time I told you that it is a very old pattern created by Bronwyn Hayes of Red Brolly. You'd have to have been reading blogs for a long time to remember her. Searching the internet, I found she'd stopped blogging way back in 2017 and put everything on hold while she dealt with a life-threatening illness. Since posting about this last month, I've learned that Bronwyn passed away in 2022. It reminds me of something I read some time ago. It was a quote from Janet Finley in a 2002 interview. Finley said:

What moves me is that when a woman is gone, even if the quilt remains anonymous, we knew someone was there. We knew that person was there. And a quilt is the last aspect of her life to survive. So many times when a woman is deceased, her pots and pans are given away, her furniture is given away, maybe there is a piece of jewelry that stays with the family, but invariably, if she was a quiltmaker, the quilt is still there, saying '"I was here, I was here." And that to me is a strong message.

I'm reminded of this every time I use one of the quilts my grandmother made. She's been gone more than 50 years, and yet, her quilts are still in use. I've used her handwork to create quilts of my own.

I've also made quilts from my mother's handwork. She passed away in 1997.

And all of that to say I can no longer find Bronwyn's pattern online. Neverthless, I found several pictures of the completed quilt. The one pictured below was included with the original pattern. Bronwyn left us in 2022, but her quilts and her patterns still tell us that she was here. I feel somewhat honored to be starting on this quilt that she created.

Okay, so it's going to get busy around here for the next couple of days. I need to do some baking today, and I'll be preparing food ahead for dinner with our neighbors on Wednesday. I'll say more about that as I go along. For now, I'm heading into the kitchen to make some blueberry oatmeal pancakes. It's a beautiful sunny day today, and we're expecting nice weather for the coming week. I am so ready.