Weather, Gypsy Quilts, and Other Quilty Things

Here in far north Texas we have been dodging EF3 tornadoes, hail, lightning, and floods. Somehow our area has remained unscathed with a little bit of hail and wind, but mostly good spring rain. Some of the communities to the west were not so lucky! The radars above were from four days of Radarscope screenshots as weather approached, and the radar capture on the right shows velocity radar just about the time an EF3 was hitting the town of Celina, 30 miles southwest of us.

In between checking the radar, life in the sewing room continues with fits and starts, and here are two flimsies made from the Gypsy pattern from Villa Rosa Designs. This was one of the patterns available for the Villa Rosa Fast and Fun Blog Hop. If you like fast stash busters, I highly recommend this pattern. The pattern has been renamed as "Onstage", and you can find it right here.

For the first Gypsy, I centered my choices around a dark blue floral from the Riley Blake Indigo Garden collection, some Decostitch by Art Gallery, and the rare and wonderful PB&J collection by Basic Grey. (Side note: I recently saw a PB&J jelly roll on Etsy for $140.00! - gasp!) I made the flimsy bigger with borders. You can see the batting and binding ready to go in the photo above.

For the second flimsy,I was inspired by Kathleen at Kathleen McMusing, who made a blues-y version of Gypsy. I decided on blue-ish purples with a bit of green thrown in. I left it at the original size, and I am hand quilting it. Slowly. And with huge stitches that are intended to be small and even. But this is a good quilt to experiment with hand stitching, because it is going to a sweet, wheel-chair bound lady who will simply be thrilled to receive it.

Since I finished my Villa Rosa Blog Hop quilt, I discovered an HST that decided to go another way (see above photo inside red heart), and so I have affectionately chosen the name Rogue Star for this quilt! I refuse to say it is a mistake. It reminds me of me, as I have so often decided to go another way rather than do the "expected" thing - lol!

I continue to lag behind on two of my sew-alongs. In the photos above:

1) Pieces Of My Life by Melva at Melva Loves Scraps - a post is coming soon!

2) I only have two blocks for the Mercantile Sampler SAL I am doing with Karen, but there is no hurry!

3) A BOM (Block of the Month) by Joy of Days Filled With Joy called Say It With Flowers, and I am caught up with it!

I am thinking about starting another SAL - I've had total fail on my vow to stay away from sew-alongs in 2024, so I might as well add another - right? This one is called Ticker Tape Heart. It is a 3-day challenge starting May 31, and it just looks different and fun. The block reminds me of Diann's pretty Crumb Hearts quilt!

Pieces Of My Life SAL

Melva at Melva Loves Scraps has the most purposeful sew-alongs - Pieces From the Past, Pieces of the Santa Fe Trail and Pieces in the Garden - and her new one is no exception. Pieces of My Life is centered around stories and memories of our families, where we are from, our parents' stories, meaningful events, etc. Along with a pattern, Melva provides a guide for documenting details of our lives into a memory book that can accompany the quilt. Melva titled the Block #1 pattern simply "The Bow" and has a lovely story to go with it on her blog right here, where you can also find details of the sew-along. 

Block #1 The Bow made with HSTs

My Mom in her yellow dress about 1933

My first block represents a special yellow dress. The story behind this block actually begins with the story of my parents' courtship, and you may find details of that sweet story in this blog post I made in 2021. One of the details of their first meeting was that Daddy said Mom was wearing a yellow dress. And the black and white photo above is one that she mailed to Daddy after they started dating, and she told me that her dress was yellow (and that she had made it), so it must have been the same one.

Many months after Mom died, I had a dream about her. She was sitting on some kind of almost throne-like chair, and she was wearing a yellow dress. , but not passionately happy like she used to, if that makes sense. I got the sense that although she seemed happy to see me, she was so joyful and content that she had no desire to be anywhere else. That dream was very comforting in my grief.

I am excited about this SAL. It is comforting to remember these stories and challenging in a fun way to translate that story into a block. I am linking with Melva's Pieces of My Life linkup right here.