Safety Pins

She gave me the small tin as a stocking stuffer. I don’t know how many years ago it was. The tin has a cute drawing on the cover with the word “FAMILY” and inside are a bunch of safety pins.

My sister, who received the same tin, and I teased my mom. What in the world would we use all those safety pins for? Mom just laughed and said she thought the tin was cute. Everyone can use safety pins, right?

That safety pin tin found a home in my top dresser drawer. I pulled it out every once in a while; I used big ones to cinch up waist bands that were too big for my little Lily’s waist. I used medium sized pins for Lily and Emmy’s bat costumes this Halloween. Today, I really found myself in need of safety pins. A LOT of safety pins.

It was something that simple math could have told me. I needed to baste together my quilt top with the batting and back fabric. The pins were supposed to be about 4 inches apart on my throw-sized quilt. Never having made a quilt before, I bought a box of 100 quilting pins.

I ran out of pins not even halfway through. I thought about running back to the fabric store, but that quilt was taped to my kitchen floor, the kids were coming home from school in less than an hour and I needed to make dinner.

I ransacked my top dresser drawer and found the little tin that said “FAMILY.”

And thought of Mom while I pinned the rest of that quilt together.

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This Winter’s To-Do List

For almost a whole year, I’ve been sewing two new quilt blocks every month (more or less). I began Craftsy’s Block of the Month quilting class last winter. Of course I blogged about it! Last February, I wrote about my new quilting project in the post “Like Mom and Dad“. Many of you know my mom was an avid quilter. When she was alive, I didn’t have much interest in helping her quilt. I helped her pick out fabric a couple of times, but she did all the work; the cutting, the sewing, the quilting. She made crib quilts for Lily and Emmy; they still use them all the time. Grandma’s quilts help the girls remember Grandma.

Grandma’s quilt comforted Lily after she fell and hurt her mouth.

When I stumbled on the Craftsy Block of the Month class, I decided to try quilting on my own. My very first block was a slashed block, the Asterisk. This block was fairly easy for me, a novice quilter, to complete. It gave me the courage to keep on going!

Asterisk Block

And when I read class descriptions like “English Paper Piecing”, “Dresden Plates” and “Curved Piecing”, I needed a little courage. I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to sew any of those quilt blocks! Not only am I a beginner at quilting, I also don’t sew very much.

But I kept at it, because every time I chose the fabric for my block and cut the pieces, every time I assembled the block like a puzzle and stitched it all together, I understood why my mom loved quilting so much.

Ohio Star

The Ohio Star Block was one of my favorites to make; learning how to make quarter square triangles was so much fun!

A curved pieced block, based on Drunkard’s Path

 The curved pieced blocks were very challenging, but not as hard to make as I thought they would be.

Circle of Geese

Visually, I just fell in love with the Circle of Geese. It is a paper pieced block that was very time consuming but also fun to make.

And so now, I have twenty completed blocks. Now comes the hard part: finishing the quilt!

All 20 quilt blocks

And finishing this quilt–adding a border, quilting, and binding it– is the only thing on my bucket list this winter! I’m going to do it–just wait and see!

Mama’s Losin’ It
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