Gwennie Inspired Medallion QAL #1
Basket was the theme for the center block and childhood was the theme for the first border.
Cookies at Christmas is what I chose for my second border. My husband and I, our kids and our grandkids all have memories centered around Christmas cookie baking so I made up a few Happy Blocks with Christmas cookies in them for my border and then appliqued recipes and "cookies" here and there.
I traced around the old recipe cards from my husband's mom's recipe card file and wrote those out in ultra fine sharpie on muslin I had soaked in homemade bubble jet set. I also copied recipes from my mom's old Cooky Book that is falling apart. I especially remember her snickerdoodles and thumbprint cookies. The Magic Cookie Bar recipe I cut from a magazine years ago. The reason I included that recipe is because our family has called those cookies Windowsill Hiders (not Magic Cookie bars) for a long time. My oldest son (now 42), when he was around 11, had a bedroom downstairs and everyone else slept upstairs. One morning I woke him up to get ready for school and found a bunch of those Magic Cookie bars hiding behind the curtains on his windowsill.
I also traced around the cookie cutters to make my applique shapes. The metal ones came from my husband's family and I just had to include Scooby because he's good for all seasons of sugar cookie making. That was always the favorite cookie cutter of my kids and now of my grandkids. (Maybe because it makes the biggest cookies?)
My husband still makes his favorite gumdrop cookies every Christmas but has left the Hard Tack behind. His parents used to make that every year and store it in old cookie tins wrapped in waxed paper. He and his siblings (all 7 of them) used to call that cookie Heart Attack instead of Hard Tack.
Gwennie Inspired Medallion #2
Weaving
From the time I was very little I loved crafts. My sisters loved dolls. I loved crafts. If I played with any dolls it was paper dolls - and that is because I would trace around them and make my own paper doll clothes.
Weaving was one of the crafts I have enjoyed over the years.
I started out with one of those potholder looms. I made potholders of every design I could think of. Of course those darned things were so small and did not server well as a potholder but I kept on making them for everyone I knew. I was always going to try making them all into a rug but never got to that point. My loom was made of metal. The looms my daughter (now almost 40) had (and I still have as seen above) were made of hard plastic. I looked around for my real and very small loom so I could include what I moved on to next but it's probably thrown up in the attic somewhere. I found the instructions for the loom in my old dusty weaving book. I made belts for everyone with it. I have a pic somewhere of me wearing one but also couldn't find it. If I remember correctly I used crochet thread to make them. And finally there's the circular looms that make nice stocking caps that look like they were knitted. My granddaughters said they wanted to learn to make some so they might be using those next. (They weren't interested in making any potholders, thank goodness).
I can tell you that it's not as easy to simulate weaving in quilting as it is to actually weave!
Childhood for the theme was Cynthia's (of Wabi-Sabi Quilts) idea so she's hosting the link up this month. It will be fun to see how everyone interprets the theme.
