At exactly 9:03 PM EDT today, the Sun will traipse across the Celestial Equator. Do you know what that means? It means that today is the first day of FALL, despite temps still in the nineties and the threat of boob sweat stopping us Southerners from decking ourselves out in sweaters as we long to do. We will rip out our impatiens and plant mums, and pile pumpkins, gourds, and random bales of hay on our suburban porches. We may still be wearing sandals for a few months longer, but we will be choosing fall colors for our pedicures from here on out. It's all about "mind over matter" as we celebrate the arrival of Fake Fall in the Carolinas.
To help us all get in the mood for the new season, I've been holding back a couple of Fall client quilts to share with you today. Grab your pumpkin spiced latte, your pumpkin muffins, slather on some pumpkin spice hand cream and if it STILL doesn't feel like it's fall, try lighting a pumpkin spice candle or two. Here we go!
Nancy's Piecing the Trail to Kansas Quilt
There is a story behind this quilt, and another story behind THAT story... When Nancy contacted me about this project, it had been languishing as a UFO (UnFinished Object) for quite some time. The pattern is called Piecing the Trail to Kansas by Lynne Hagmeier of Kansas Troubles Quilters, and it comes with a historical fiction "journal" that has a chapter for each month about the joys and sorrows experienced by a family of pioneers on the wagon train to Kansas Territory in the 1850s. The quilt block for each month related to what was happening in the book for that month's chapter.
Nancy tells me that she really got into the story about the pioneer experience and had enjoyed piecing the quilt top as a BOM (Block of the Month) program at a local quilt shop, but once the BOM program ended, her enthusiasm for finishing it petered out.
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| Nancy's 79 x 90 Trail to Kansas Quilt, Finished at Last with Primitive Fall E2E |
I'm so glad she brought this to me because it's a gorgeous quilt that deserved to be finished! There is also a story behind the Primitive Fall edge-to-edge quilting design we selected for this quilt, featuring pumpkins, moons, stars, birds (crows?), and botanicals.
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| Detail of Primitive Fall E2E on Nancy's Quilt |
In the pattern cover photo below, you can see the additional appliqué elements that were supposed to be added to the background of this quilt. Nancy had had enough of this project and just didn't feel motivated to do all of that appliqué work, even though the appliqué elements were symbolic representations of the storyline about the pioneer woman's family.
