
I got an email this weekend from someone who was looking for a pattern in this Farmhouse Favorites book by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. Since Carrie is my favorite designer I have her book. The book is out of print now, sadly, but you can still get copies on Amazon and used copies as well. Twelve of Carrie's patterns are in the book, and those individual patterns will not be found for love or money anymore. I sent my reader the link to purchase the book, but I don't know if she did or not. It's a great book, actually.

The email from my reader put me in mind of an ancient UFO that I had started back in 2010, maybe earlier. I think I abandoned it because we were moving and I never picked it up again after we were settled in our new house. The project was called Opening Day and I was using the exact fabrics shown on the pattern cover, "Rites of Spring" by Brannock and Patek. I went out to the garage and had a rummage, and low and behold, I found the box with the project. Unfortunately, the pattern instructions were nowhere to be seen, so I was lucky to have the book, which has the pattern in it.

It seems that I had cut everything out and had made 140 flying geese for the quilt blocks. This was back in the day when I felt that close was good enough and starching fabric wasn't anything I considered doing. Well. These days I go to a lot of trouble to have my flying geese be perfectly accurate in their measurement, and I can't sew on floppy unstarched fabric to save my life. What could be done to salvage this project? I started out by trimming the flying geese down to as close to the exact size as I could get. I wasn't getting much to trim which encouraged me.

I decided to lightly starch the block units as I went along, which was a big mess. It did work pretty well though once it dried. I didn't notice any shrinking and the fabric crisped up enough to make it at least "sewable". Gosh, am I ever spoiled working with nicely starched fabric now that I have adopted that practice.

I made eight red stars on Friday. They are a skosh shy of 8 1/2", but I think I can make it work.

Then on Saturday, I made eight green stars.
I still like this fabric, and green and red are a favorite combination for me. The other stars are kind of a bronze color, and a chocolate brown. I think I'll work on this a bit each week and see where I get. Wish me luck! Do you ever rediscover an old project and decide to finish it? This seems to be my year for tackling UFOs!
Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Eva is back from science camp. I picked her up on Friday at 6:00 PM. She was starving and dirty, so I brought her home and put her right in the shower. We fed her fresh baked banana bread and a hot meal, and she was in bed by 8:30. All in all, I think she had a great time.