Seeing Stars

My sister and family came to visit from my hometown (or as my husband calls it, 'the old country'). One of the reasons they came was to help me (or rather encourage me) to finish the green quilt that my sister had started many moons ago. Sis did the blocks from Yellow Brick Road but she needed me to quilt the baby. I thought that adding a border of black would help bring it together. So, I had that done and sandwiched ready for pinning before they arrived.

While I pinned Friday night and quilted ALL day Saturday, my sister kept me company. (The kids all went bowling with the dads). I decided that I would meander quilt with stars and it seemed to take forever (about 8 hours)!!!

This is what the back looked like.
I went to bed around 12:45 AM last night (remember I like to go to bed early??) and was back in the sewing room at 6:30 AM this morning (yup, I get up early). The final stitches of the binding were sewn around 10:30 AM.

This is the front...

and the back....
The quilt was quickly packed up and they headed back home. Boy, am I beat!!!!

Yesterday, my sister and I ran to one of our local quilt shops under the guise of needing additional black fabric for the binding (well, I did!). The shop was having a sale and, of course, I came away with some extras.

These cute fat quarters from Amy Schimler's newest collection.

I have a fat quarter of this green and it is almost gone. Both the green and the red were on sale, so I got more.
Our Sunday night group meets tonight and we always give our birthday girl a half yard of fabric of their choice. She wanted olive green or fabric with mirrors on it (I didn't have time to go to the shop which sells that).

And I grabbed a fat quarter of this. I think it looks pretty funky and would look great in one of my scrap quilts.
My maternal aunt recently moved to Toronto from Saskatoon. She had some items of my grandparents that she sent to my sister for us to divide. She sent a big box of Little Blue Books that had belonged to my grandfather. A lot of interesting titles from 'The Nature of Dreams' to 'King Henry VIII' to 'Buddhism'.

My grandfather, Max, emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s, when one or more of his older brothers had enough money to send back home to their youngest brother so that he could travel to Canada. He was not well educated and my aunt told us that Max (and his brothers) would purchase these Little Blue Books which they could stick in their pockets to take with them to work and read to further their education.

I took this photo of a photo (sorry about the glare but I can't take it out of the frame) of my grandather, Max. I believe he was about 19 years old at the time. Perhaps just before or after he emigrated to Canada.

This is Max many years later with my sister (on the right) and myself (on the left) at my aunt's home.

Hey! Guess what?!!!! This is my 50th post!!!! In celebration of my blogging learning curve, I will have a giveaway!!! Leave me a comment, and I will have a drawing later this week!!!

Now I need some sleep!!!