Windmills Of Your Mind

After a violent and blessedly air-clearing summer thunderstorm, my Civil War fabrics had gotten what I laughingly call, the final rinse! But the day turned breezy and they dried out just fine.

Yesterday I got Matthew's help to plant two baby hostas, one on either side of the shade bed where the astilbes are just finishing blooming. There are many mature hostas there already, but I needed to fill in the corners of the bed. He did a great job planting them! They sure do look puny next to the adult plants but they will grow.

If you look at about 4 O'clock in the above picture, maybe you can spot the baby hosta plant.

Thank goodness for that drenching rain we got today, everything had been so very dry.

Today was also great fun because as I was stitching along by hand, hemming my Windmills Of Your Mind quilt, I was ready to take a break. Well, I thought, maybe I'll just rethread the needle once more...

 And suddenly I realized that that one last needleful gave me enough thread to finish it! I hadn't thought I was even close, so it snuck up on me! LOL! Now, honestly, how often does that happen? Usually you find you need to go a whole nuther long side. So here it is:

I need to measure it and do the label and hanging sleeve, but it is a nice couch-potato size.

This pattern was all done with Civil War reproduction fabrics in a limited palette of red, blue, brown, and creamy neutrals. The quilt center pattern was shown in a Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ixvjje310&feature=relmfu by Jenny Doan of the Missouri Star Quilt Company. It was originally from the 3 Dudes Quilt Shop in Phoenix, Arizona. I added the flying geese border myself.

The backing of this quilt is an ecru flannel and I want you to see a few shots of the back to be able to appreciate Linda Monasky of the Bear Paw Gallery  http://www.thebearpawgallery.com/machine_quilting.html and her beautiful longarm quilting. She put a heart on each flying goose.

 The wide indigo borders have stars and loops which is my personal favorite.

And the windmills have interlocking circles on them. Linda did a magnificent job!
Here is a close up to show you the fabrics and the stars. Not all, but many of these Civil War reproduction fabrics came from the Sew Far Sew Good online quilt shop http://www.sewfarsewgoodquiltshop.com/ as well as the Golden Gese Qult Shop http://goldengesequilts.com/ right here in Concord, New Hampshire.

I love this quilt so much that I want to keep it in my family, but not at MY house! Raven's shedding black lab fur was very challenging to keep this backing clean. I think that this quilt will go to live at my sister Suzanne's house where I can visit it. She has no fur babies and she will treasure it.