A Visit With Some Old Friends

My husband Mike and I went to Florida for a few days to visit my family. We had a belated 50th anniversary gathering for my parents. My Mom didn't want to have a party, she just wanted all of us to visit. We were joined by my brother Jeff and his family who came all the way from California. I am still gathering photos from various cameras and iPhones, so I will post more about our family visit later.

In the interim, I caught up with some old friends...quilts from my pre-blog days that I had given to my parents over the past decade or so...

I made these two quilts for my parents' 35th anniversary back in 1997, which was also the year that my niece Rachel was born. The only reason I'm able to remember this is that I was diligent and labelled the back of both quilts! The quilts are from the book, Two for Your Money by Jo Parrott. I took a workshop with her in 1996 when she visited Massachusetts. I remember that my car broke down on the way to the workshop and I spent some quality time waiting in a gas station in the pouring rain for my car to be fixed. A couple of hours, and a new alternator later, I finally made it. Luckily it was a 2-day workshop. The larger, pinwheel-like top quilt was made first, and the bottom quilt, the basket quilt, was made with the left-over pieces. I made these quilts to match my parents' living room sofas, that fortunately moved from Massachusetts to Florida with them when they retired.

Mom and Dad were recruited to hold up the quilt. Mom painted the portrait of
my niece Rachel that appears over the center of the quilt.

The quilting on both quilts is stunning. I sent them to a machine quilter that I had found
in Texas in early Internet days. If you double-click on the photo, it should enlarge.

Mom and Dad's wedding photo, November 1962

I made two identical quilts, above, for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary (only one is shown). I didn't realize that the photo was blurry or I would have taken another. They are Terry Atkinson's Yellow Brick Road, one of my favorite (so easy!) patterns to make. The colors are much lovelier in person. My Mom and I picked out all the fabrics together at one of my favorite quilt shops, Portsmouth Fabric Company. I remember that my Mom was concerned about finding so many different colors to put together in one quilt. And ten years later, I still have the remaining fat quarters (I bought half yards, so I could split them) reserved in my stash to make a quilt for me.

My Mom painted these two paintings, shown above, to match her quilts. They hang above my parents' bed.

I made this stained glass wall hanging so long ago, I can't find it anywhere on my finished projects list (which I first started keeping back in 2001) and I forgot to check the back of the quilt to see if it had a label. There is supposed to be a matching Iris quilt...I actually started it a number of years ago, but mistakenly traced half the pieces backwards, so I put it away...for a while....

I finished this beautiful Irish Chain quilt a few years ago and gave it to my Mom when she requested something with purple in it for her guest bedroom. This quilt was made from my stash and started at least 14 years ago in a class at the long defunct Quilted or Not. I really like the purple pansy fabric on the back (seen on the left in the photo) as well.

If you look closely, you can see some of the table runner that
matches my parents' 35th wedding anniversary quilts.

50 Happy Years Later! Dad, Mom, and me.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy