More Surprises, Good and Bad

1) My sister gave me two HUGE bags of scraps, blocks, pre-cut borders, and even finished tops. I get to play with these and do whatever I want with them (99.9% will be given away in the form of quilts for kids). From her scraps so far I made these:

I actually quilted the green one myself! I hadn't done that in while. In my life I have some wonderful volunteers who quilt much better than I can, so I usually send them off to be finished more beautifully. The green one includes some of my sister's leftovers, and some of my own.

2) I am working on a quilt top made of scraps. Over the last few days as I was working on various quilt tops, I threw all my scraps in a special pile. This weekend I decided to "quickly" sew them all together and get them out of my way. Surprise! It wasn't quick at all. I used up all the scraps in the special pile and had to pull out more. It's growing, but not as quickly as I had hoped. Still, I'm almost done.

3) Yesterday I attended a wedding reception. The bride and groom were married in Mexico a couple of months ago. The bride's mother is my friend. Another friend of the mother approached me and said "You don't know me, but I know you. I read your blog!" That always takes me a little by surprise. I know I see numbers and dots on a map -- people who have read my blog. But in real life, they just seem like dots on a map, so I'm always surprised when they turn into real people. Well, A. was lots of fun to chat with, and we had overlapping lives in some surprising ways. Six degrees of separation and all that. Fun!

Here is the bride. We couldn't find the groom at the moment, so you don't get to see him.

The cake table.. those cakes were to die for! Yum!

4) Sad surprise. My friend, D., died of cancer. She had been in hospice, but only briefly. I knew the end was coming, but it still took me by surprise. I still feel like I will see her at another quilt event some time... it's hard to wrap my head around her absence. RIP, dear, gentle D.