One Very Special Veteran

Monday was a glorious day for the Alton, New Hampshire Memorial Day parade down Main Street to the cemetery for the presentations of a wreath.

My next door neighbor, Al Constant, is a very special veteran who spent much of his life in the army. Now retired, he has lovingly restored this army Jeep from the Vietnam era to working condition just to be able to drive it in this parade. The morning was quite chilly early on and he had trouble getting it started. But he made it go!

Matthew and I cheered Al on with so much pleasure at seeing Al so happy and proud.

After the parade, we drove back to Al's house to present him with my gift of the quilt that most of you regular followers know as "Mr. Bojangles" which is the song that I couldn't get out of my head as I sewed the Civil War reproduction snowball/9-patches together.

What is different about this quilt is that the "snowballs" are carrying the darker colors rather than the traditional lights. But it still gives the illusion of the "Twisted Ribbons", as it is also known, from a distance.

Al was so very surprised to receive this quilt and he must've said "thank you" a hundred times.

I wanted to open the quilt all the way up so that he could see it, but he was horrified that it might touch the ground.

I'm sort of laughing that I presented Al with his warm quilt just before the big heat wave is scheduled to hit, but he couldn't have cared about that!
He even is so generous that he is going to let me put it into the Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild quilt show in the fall. Thank you, Al, for your service!

Happy sewing everybody!