rambling thoughts and a sleepy Sunday

My hubby has taken the little one for a bike ride (although a whispery early morning phone call has me suspecting that this outing is connected somehow to my birthday!  Tee hee, lucky me!).  It is quiet here, there's a breeze tinged with Fall coming through the window, and I thought it would be nice to document a few moments from this lazy morning.  This will be a rambling, meandering post, but I hope you'll indulge me!

There was train play this morning on my orange string quilt -- such a nice use of a quilt, if you ask me. Looking at this set-up also makes me feel a little nostalgic, because these Thomas the Tank Engine trains were my son's when he was just the age our littlest one is now: 2 years old -- and that was 15 years ago.  It seems like yesterday, it really does.

The passage of time -- when you have children -- is a strange, strange thing. 

My son was playing with these very trains the night his sister (my older daughter) was born. 

He woke up around 4 a.m. and emerged bleary-eyed from his room to find me, his dad, my best friend, the midwife and the birth assistant all in the living room.  "It's like a party!" he said, happily.  And he was a little guy who loved parties.  He played trains while I laboured.  When things got a bit intense, we reminded him that it was hard work that I was doing.  "Don't do hard work, Mommy!" he pleaded, hanging on me.  "Do EASY WORK!"  Wise words from such a little guy. 

He covered his baby sister with kisses when she was born, still connected to me by her cord.  The trains were forgotten for a little while.

And now 14 more years have passed, and here I am about to turn 43, and with another little sweetie playing trains.  Sigh.  I don't know how this happened so quickly, but it's nice to feel so happy with my life.

And here are a few sneak peeks at another little labour of love, finally -- after sitting dormant for many weeks -- coming close to completion.

First it had to be basted (and being a bed-sized quilt this required moving all the living room furniture and rolling up the rug), and test-driven by Penelope.

There was a good amount of straight-line quilting done, and then some polka-dot binding cut (3" widths this time around, to show the Savon Bouquet dots to their full advantage!).  I thought I'd throw in a gratuitous shot or two of my favourite cutting tool, the June Tailor Shape Cut Plus.  If you don't have one, you really should get one!!  It makes cutting piles of evenly sized strips a breeze.

And now I'm hand-quilting (first time, so it's a little wonky...but still cute, I think), stitching around the inner pink border of every block with DMC Perle cotton in variegated rose.

 

With just handstitching ahead of me (the remaining quilting and then finishing the binding), it's all easy riding from here on in.  And when I'm sewing by hand my mind seems to wander, drifting through a sea of memories.  I bet I'm not alone on that one.   

Monday morning feels very far away right now, and I'm just going to enjoy that! I hope you do too.