Celia check-in

It occurred to me recently (as I was making a new 'busy bag' of hand-sewing projects) that I've been shuffling a lot of Celia's GFG blocks back and forth, but haven't really taken any kind of accounting as to how many I've made over the past year and a half.

And, as I type this, I realize I never blogged about this project in the first place!

Celia, March 2020

Back in the Winter of 2020-21, I was asked if I would take on and finish a project of a newly-departed Magpie, Celia. My life with my parents was settling into a routine of '2 months with, 1 month at home' with no indication that routine would change anytime soon. A hand project sounded like just the thing!

That February, a box arrived filled with Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs fabrics, some solid black fabric, and 13 completed Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks. Six of them had already been sewn together, giving me an idea of what Celia had in mind.

My parents' house had a nice overlook onto the front hallway, so with a little shoving of furniture I was able to get a long view of a possible finished size of this project.

 

I wrote this to the Magpies on 2/26/21: "I laid out all the finished blocks Celia had made, compared them to the fabric in the box, and decided Celia seemed to intend that each block be unique and that no fabrics were to be duplicated. My mom came into the room while I was doing this and we had a nice time discussing the elements of all the fabrics, how so many were alike yet different, how some designs would probably lose the eye-drawing feature when cut into smaller pieces (and how that could be a good thing); basically, the kind of conversation you'd have with someone possessing an artist's eye. 

"There's enough unused fabric to make 7 more unique diamond blocks which will make a nice-sized middle. I played with a possible size on the floor (using the existing blocks to set the longest and widest points) but I think I'll go a bit smaller than this photo would suggest (21 blocks vs 28, plus partial blocks for the edges) which will give me room to play with borders to flesh the whole thing out to Queen size."

Thank goodness for archived messages in groups.io!

For the past 21 months I've been working on this project. It represents hours spent in the ER (or waiting in the car because only one additional person was allowed in the ER, thanks to COVID, and it wasn't me), hours spent in airport terminals as I flew back and forth between Texas and Oregon for almost 2 years, and sometimes, quiet hours in the morning waiting for my folks to wake up and start the day.

Taking advantage of the early morning sunshine coming through the glass doors on my left.

Then yesterday...

It occurred to me recently (as I was making a new 'busy bag' of hand-sewing projects) that I've been shuffling a lot of Celia's GFG blocks back and forth, but haven't really taken any kind of accounting as to how many I've made over the past year and a half.

So I pulled out everything and pinned it all to my design wall,

except for the 5 blocks that have the colored hexies sewn together, but not the black border.

I marked out what has been completed on my graph paper game plan (including the non-bordered 5 blocks),

which means I only have 4 full blocks and several partial blocks left to assemble.

When I pulled out the project yesterday and compared the remaining fabrics to the blocks assembled, I started to worry that I'd misplaced some things. All the fabrics on hand had already been used in a block. What of the 'all blocks unique' plan/idea? Then I reread my text to the Magpies, counted on my fingers, and realized I had already completed all the unique pairings over the past several months. Nothing had been misplaced, and all was going according to plan. Whew!

Four pairings of fabrics were made yesterday (making sure no block had already been sewn together with those combinations) and today I cut out and bagged the hexies, ready to be basted and ultimately sewn into the final four full blocks. There's plenty of fabrics left for the partial blocks along the sides and bottom, and three more small corner blocks (one's been done already, and colored in on the plan).

I'm pleasantly surprised at how much has been completed. I honestly had no idea it had progressed this far, one stitch at a time. The best part? Feeling that Celia was with me through the hard times, buoying me with her love.