Quilts Gifted + Seasons of Life

Even though for the most part sewing has been on the back burner the past 6 weeks, I do have a couple good things to share, including a couple of quilts as gifts. In the midst of all of the crazy, I actually finished a quilt for a special teacher. (Thanks to my friend Monica who did the quilting and my-2020-self who cut the fabric 2 years ago for making this feasible.)

This quilt is for a teacher who has made a HUGE difference in my senior’s life. She’s mentored him and ignited an interest (computer related) that has become his intended college pursuit, helped him find a summer internship and given him so many chances to learn and succeed and grow. I’m beyond grateful.

Especially because this was my kid who struggled in elementary school. I worried about him SO much during those years. If someone had told me what he would achieve by the time he finished High School, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m a puddle of tears, even now! She’s also retiring after 20 years of making a difference in the life of many other students. So a quilt felt very appropriate for this one.

Also, shout out to all the teachers out there who make a difference. Bless every last one of them – especially for the herculean efforts they’ve made the past 2+ years.

This is the 3rd or 4th red-and-black-plaid patchwork quilt I’ve made now. And I still love them just as much as ever. You can read about the original (and how I made it) here and more about fabric options in the most recent version here. Red, Black and White are school colors for our local high school as well as two in-state colleges, so the combination works great as a gift for people with ties to those schools. One of these days I’ll get around to making one for us to keep. I have enough patchwork blocks left to still make one more. 😉

We presented the quilt last night at their end-of-year banquet, and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get a picture of that. Especially because I ran out of time to do a proper quilt “photo shoot.” Fortunately my husband and daughter got some pictures for me yesterday on the way to a hike in the canyon. Nice that I can occasionally outsource quilt photography duties to my well-trained crew. 😉 

Another quilt presented this month was the Notting Hill baby lattice quilt to my newest niece who was in town to meet us for the first time.  My favorite part of this gifting was this baby’s older siblings excitedly exclaiming, “A get’s her own quilt now too!” ❤

May is always the craziest month of the year – sometimes I think it’s busier than December! And this year is no exception! This year we kicked things off early with the college graduation celebration of our oldest daughter at the end of April, moving another daughter home from a different college a few hours away, lots of extended family members in town from out of state, prom for our two high school boys, and then all of the end of the year celebratory events, assemblies, meetings, etc. for our son who is graduating from high school tomorrow. Whew!

When I first started writing my blog I was at this stage of life:

That was 13 years ago now. I can’t believe that bunch of little people are now all big people! I remember when my kids were this age people warning me “It goes so fast!” And I hated when people said that to me, because it did NOT feel like it was going fast. But now I will acknowledge, those people were right!

One more thing to share: Riley Blake released the final mystery quilt layout instructions for the 2022 Quilt Block Challenge. You can see all of my blocks and where to find the block pattern instructions here:

For reasons previously mentioned, I have not had time to put my blocks into the final quilt layout, so I’ll be doing that sometime this summer. But here is a picture of the finished quilt and here is the link to the final quilt instructions!

Excited to have a fun project to put together!

I have a few other quilts I’m hoping to work on as gifts this summer too. Maybe things will calm down for a bit? I’m not betting on that happening until fall, but maybe I can find some snatched moments here and there. Or not. Maybe I’ll just slow down and soak in this summer with my kids all home before most of them move on to new adventures this fall. (You’d think I’d get that by now!)

Best wishes with your own seasonal transitions – whether that’s just good old Spring to Summer, or one stage of life to the next.