Special K!

I am happy (sort of) to say that we are back from a wonderful week in Toronto and were lucky to be delayed only one day due to Mother Nature.  I will spare you the details of the drive back earlier this week but suffice it to say - the roads could have used a bit more attention.  Leaving is hard.  Always hard.  Our son.  Our daughter-in-law.  And, our "perfect" grandson -- and if you are a grammie, you know that all grandchildren are perfect.  So is ours!

What helped with leaving this week was the anticipation of meeting our new great-nephew who put in is appearance on Sunday!  Special K!  Loved him from the minute I heard my niece-the-athlete's voice informing me that I was now "officially" Grand Aunt Jan (GAJ for short).  I love my nieces to death and being a "great aunt" seemed like underachieving so I told them I wanted to be Grand Aunt Jan (and if you say that in with a Downton Abbey affectation, it sort of rhymes).  Nevertheless, I was anxious to meet another "perfect" grandchild.

This is the quilt that I made for my sister (the new grammie) for Christmas.  It is from strings that my niece-the-quilter gave me last year when she was cleaning out some of her scraps.  Most are about 1" wide and from various bright pre-cuts she used in making quilts for children in her life.  I had made a few blocks with them by actually piecing the string onto a pre-cut square.  I'm not sure I really like this method but it does provide stabilization and makes it easy to trim them down.

So -- this particular quilt is from my niece-the-quilter (altho she didn't know about it), mr iquiltforfun, and me.  And I have mentioned it on the blog a time or two but was unable to show the blocks because it was a Christmas secret.

The backing (and this is a dreadful picture) is from a cut of fabric (beautiful pink fuchsias on a vibrant blue background in real life) that I bought in Hawaii when the new mommy and daddy got married two years ago.  The binding is a bright pink (yes, I know it's a boy!) Indian batik that the new parents gave me for a birthday.  And the strings are all from the new aunt -- along with some that I added to increase the significance of the quilt.

Besides a piece of Christmas fabric from my mother's fabrics (it's really not very pretty but it needed to be in there!), I have added at least one strip from every fabric that I received for my 60th birthday.  I have written about that quilt here if you want more detail.  This remains one of the (if not the) most special quilts I have because of the significance of each piece of fabric.

So baby K's grammie has a quilt for when he comes to visit.  Can't wait to see him in his stroller in the neighborhood this spring or laying on the quilt on his little belly in a few months.  New babies bring us so much joy!  And so does sharing our love of quilting with those who appreciate it.  Life is good.

I hope you are starting 2014 off with lots of joy in your life!

Jan