star of hope flags

This week's Project Quilting challenge was all about triangles.

It struck me funny, as I've actually been thinking a lot about triangles lately. I've noticed that a lot of quilts I have made in the past have taken on similar triangular patterns - but I didn't know I was doing it at the time. I've also been learning a lot about the Pyramids in Egypt...(if you don't have the Gaia app and are looking for some interesting things to watch, I highly recommend it). And I even have a favorite tower that I drive by on the road from time to time that I like to call my "triangle tower" because of the way it has a bunch of increasingly smaller triangles all pointing up to the sky.

What can I say? It has three sides. Three is the magic number. Must be good. Ha!

Well I've also been thinking a lot about planting seeds and starting a garden too. So in looking for inspiration for this quilt, I thought I would check out my Farmer's Wife Quilt book, and I came across this little gem:

star of hope

I got the idea that this pattern might look nice as a triangle. So I made a couple.

And then I quilted them, cut them in half, added some decorative stuff on one of the edges of each triangle, zig-zag stitched the edges, punched some rivets in them for hanging, and VOILA:

A fun little string of triangle flags full of stars and hope.

They make me kind of happy.

Another thing that makes me happy is the letter that goes along with this block in my book. You see, in 1922, a magazine called "The Farmer's Wife" had a letter-writing contest among farm women and asked them if they would want their daughters to marry farmers when they grew up. From my understanding, it was these letters that inspired the Farmer's Wife quilt. Here is the one that goes with Star of Hope:

I think it's just lovely.

And I suppose that is all for now.

Tah-tah!

xoxo,
erin

grandmother’s crossing guide

Hello!

I am posting this in more of a hurry than what I would like, so unfortunately I don’t have the time to tell you the entire story behind this quilt.

Here are the basics:

it was created for Project Quilting’s “Hometown Proud” challenge.

I just moved to the town where my grandmother used to live. One thing I love about it is how it is very “walkable.” It has a small town feel and there are crossing guards everywhere looking out for pedestrians.

I am very much at a crossroads in my life.

I initially planned on making a quilt out of the classic Grandmother’s Cross pattern, which would have looked a bit like this:

But that wasn’t meant to be. Instead it turned out more like this:

And here is the finished product:

The mountain range is in gratitude to my grandmother’s guidance, the bright orange is for the crossing guards, and the two moons are a nod to a book I love by Haruki Murakami called IQ84.

I wish I could share more, but that will have to be all for now.

Thanks for reading!!!

xoxo,
erin