GRANDMA'S HERE

This is the first violet found on our property.  Its significance is emotional.  You see, my grandmother, who died in 1965, loved violets.  She and I would walk the grassy path between her house and her sister's, and she would swoop down and pick up all the violets along the way, gathering a tiny, delicately fragrant bouquet by the time we arrived at my (great) Aunt Mary's house. 
Invariably, no matter where I lived once I grew up and moved away from my family's home, if there weren't violets there at my arrival, they appeared as if by magic within a year or two.  I would always celebrate these blossoms as evidence that my own special guardian angel  had found me again and was once more watching over me.  I cannot tell you the peace that that gives me to think that I am so destined to be forever spiritually linked with my grandmother, who grew up poor and hard working but always found joy in the simplest things and whose heart held us all in its embrace.
No one else in the neighborhood has violets growing on his/her property....

This is my best bud, quilter extraordinaire, and psychological twin, Mary Nielsen.  We do lots of quilting together, and talking, and eating of Good N Plenty and M&M's.  Recently she came to visit in order to teach my guild how to use the Square in a Square ruler.  And then she stayed to "play" with fabric with me for the next three days. 

So, we dug out our Jodi Barrows books and rulers and about 22 of us stared at Mary like deer in the headlights, but eventually her patient explanations and demonstrations took hold, and we got down to work.  Below is my little Constellation Star quilt -- a table topper.  If I had it to do over again, I would make the red and white striped squares with the blue star points be at the four corners to define the quilt a little better.

Once our visit was over, I quickly got back to work on a customer's quilt that had been waiting in the wings for the last week.  Below is Gussie's Quilt.  The white areas are for future applique.  Gussie wanted to have the background done first.  This is a novel approach for me, but I happily pitched in and gave her some geometric lines for the top and bottom borders and then used four echoed sunflowers with MacTavishing behind them to fill the 26" square in the middle.  What do you think?

                                    

Here's a closeup of the sunflowers.

So that's it for today -- grandma's watching over me, Mary is safely back home creating new quilts to marvel over, and I'm back in the saddle with my work.  It's a wonderful life.