Wow! Like, jaw dropping wow! Nice job, Shelley!!

well, flat and square is definitely an accomplishment.  But your colors and design look wonderful, at least in the little 3" square I can see.  I think lots of people would be wow'd.

Beautiful Beautiful Just Beautiful 

Jo

Did you write down a start date on this project?  Curious minds want to know how long this "Forever Project" top actually took.

judyinohio said:

Did you write down a start date on this project?

I started April 2021 .. so this Forever Project took 9 months.  :-)

I worked on it while I was a passenger on road trips and in the evenings, whilst enjoying Mr. Pirate's company & watching TV.    Not too many continuous hours but they do add up.

This is fantastic!  Love love love the border. 

Still plugging away on the Kresge Kid project. I recall saying that I would not do any applique on this bit of creativity and this block at the top of the photo is not really-o, truly-o applique in the classic sense, it is just two slabs of color plopped on a third piece of color with one piece of color stitched down. Yeah, right.

The popcorn print fabric has been backed with "Thread Magic" from Superior threads, free motion stitched and spritzed with water so it would pucker and thus the popcorn would look more lumpy. This colorful bowl of popcorn is supposed to represent Marion, Ohio, the city where DH and I have made our home for the last 42 years. This town holds a Popcorn Festival the weekend after Labor Day. The bowl represents the kind of hand crafted pottery that local people sell at booths during the festival ... it's an all very crafty, down home kind of a shindig that we avoid after sundown when it gets a bit rowdy.

Second block with auto tires and strange border represents Akron, Ohio, DH's home town where he grew up and lived in the same house until he moved away to go to college. He lived in Firestone Park and when my parents were transferred to Akron they lived in Goodyear Heights. DH and I met as students when we were at Kent State University.

The border around the tire fabric represents my mother's laundry when she would hang the sheets out to dry. (This was in 1959-1962 before she had an automatic dryer.) Sometimes the particulate matter from the chimneys of the rubber factories would belch specks of "crud" downwind and this stuff would land on my mother's sheets ... but sometimes not. She would sometimes have clean sheets to bring in the house and sometimes have to wash the sheets again and then hang them in the basement to try. Then the sheets would smell like the coal bins next to the furnace and that made her unhappy.

Third photo is a piece of counted cross stitch that my DM made for me to hang in my sewing room. I have removed it from the frame and will include it in the Kresge Kid quilt as a memento of my DM. When it comes time to insert this block made by  my DM into the quilt I can add an ice-blue border if needed to enlarge the block; she had the prettiest blue eyes so if the block needs to be larger that's the color I will add.

wonderful!  I'm quilting some charity quilts today.  Just got my machine back from it's 1st service and installed my brand new electromagnetic channel locks.  I've not done a pattern requiring the channel locks, but it is nice when basting the top not to have to run around and put on the plastic clip, wondering if it's going to break again or not.

I have discovered I DO NOT care for Spoonflower fabric.  Someone donated a bunch of it and it was used for donation quilts.  I have having lots of problems with shredding - grrrrr.  Fortunately I'm not tying off ends, just sewing over the last 3/8" or so of stitching.

The popcorn fabric I used in that Marion bowl was a Spoonflower purchase (thru Etsy) and it seems to be "gritty" (for lack of a better word).  I wondered if that was normal or a fluke.

Sure like your fancy quilting on charity quilts ... never got anything that nice back in the day when I did the collections for Linus.

More lovely blocks!  You are sewing up a storm. I sure enjoy reading your history.