our Sunday

Today we did what any mixed-heritage, completely secular family would do: we led our 3-year-old through an egg hunt in my parents' garden and then settled down to a brunch of matzo brei and fruit salad. It was great fun for little Frida, who was delighted by the discovery of little plastic eggs filled with raisins (which the adults ate), peanuts, bunny-shaped cheese crackers, and gummy bears (her favourite).  We weren't completely virtuous: she also found a little paper bunny encasing a very nice milk chocolate, which was she appreciated greatly! None of this is documented in photos, but perhaps it is etched in her toddler memory bank.

The next 48 hours promises to be very busy, with my son's birthday fast approaching, on Tuesday -- it will be his 18th, which is very, very, very hard for me to comprehend.  Anyway, he has a Calculus exam on his birthday (how could they?!), and since the schools here are on break through tomorrow (Easter Monday), we are going to celebrate one day early.  (I am also flying out to Salt Lake City at the crack-of-dawn on Tuesday...practically 18 years-to-the-hour of when I first gave birth...sigh....)

So where's the stitchery in all this?  Yes, there is some.

Back in September Jackson requested a quilt, something with a punch of colour, and together we selected a range of greens from my stash.  He even chose the solid (Prairie Green) from my Moda Bella colour card.  It wouldn't have been my choice, but it has grown on me!

I pieced the top -- a second adaptation of Kim Brackett's "Paddle Wheel" from Scrapbasket Sensations -- and then it languished, part of a growing stack of TBQs (to-be-quilteds) in the upstairs hallway.

I finally, finally, not-a-moment-too-soon, got it done (today!) -- after a little border wrangling that I won't detail here since it would overshadow the very good intentions I had in getting this done for Jackson's birthday.  I will explore my border-sewing woes and solutions another day.

For now, I am content in the knowledge that he will have a quilt to take with him to university. This is a HUGE birthday, for the boy and his mama.

It's so nice to have daffodils, tulips, and hyacinth in early April; everything is blooming earlier than usual this year.

I had cut one block a wee bit too small, and embroidered a little message and the date in the extra sashing space.

Oops.  Blogger has just informed me that I'm out of photo storage space and cannot add any more photos until I shell out $5/year.  Hmmm.  Well, I'll tell you that the backing fabric is a green-and-yellow crosshatch-y type print from Moda Origins.  I used all my remaining black and white Alexander Henry Heath for the binding, filling in with some b & w hexagons for the last 10 inches or so.  The quilting was minimalist (hey, at least it's done!), using a variegated green Aurifil 50 wt thread to stitch in the ditch of each block, with intersecting figure 8s (like a four-petalled flower) free-motion quilted in each block, and 2 lines of straight line quilting at each edge of each border. 

It looks really cool from the back...and you'll have to trust me on that one!

Oooohhhh, this is a big week, in so many ways. I am reeling a bit, I must admit.

I hope everyone has had a lovely holiday, whatever you celebrate and however you do so!