National Quilting Day

 It wasn't planned to align this way, but today Mom and I put the first applique stitches into the border of her project:

We've set ourselves up at opposite ends of the top, using our preferred tools and threads. I stitch using a much smaller spacing than she does, ridiculously small in comparison, but we're making respectable progress!

Yesterday we spent the afternoon going over all her notes (I'm grateful she recognized her own handwriting), all the pattern piece templates she'd cut out, and all the flower and leaf fabric pieces she had already cut out and basted the edges of. (Cringe with me, please, at that sentence structure!) She had made a note of additional pieces she wanted to add to each side,

The only original identifying clue was the (D) in the last line. I added the others.

but it wasn't until I looked closely at the original magazine picture that I fully understood those notes. One of the additional flowers she had described as "extra large orange" and I'd been taking that literally, despite the fact that orange fabric was nowhere in her stash, nor would it be a pleasing addition to the color scheme established in this top. But the flower in the original magazine photo might? be mistaken for orange. That was where her color references were coming from!

 

That closer look also revealed the reason for the additional flowers and leaves she wanted to add to each side: the magazine pattern had one less segment to the vine, per side, than her border did. She needed to fill her longer border with more appliqued pieces.

So we sorted and counted and baggied and labeled. Then we gathered all the fabrics she had set aside for this top and figured out which of them would make good centers to the flowers she'd already cut out, and which would be a good choice for the flowers she hadn't yet cut out. It took a good part of the afternoon and by the end of it we were pooped but organized!

This afternoon while I was doing their grocery shopping she ironed the top the best she could. She wasn't willing to start stitching the vine until the background/border fabric was as wrinkle-free as possible. In the process she became familiar with the stitching I had done to get the whole thing assembled, but assumed it was all her work. Her belief is that she made the clips in the seam allowances to make things iron flat, then forgot about all of it in the intervening years. That was what I was hoping for, actually. There are no hurt feelings or misunderstandings about why someone else took her project and worked on it behind her back. It's all "her" handiwork!