Mom's second quilt

Mom and Pop used that Star and Crescent quilt for more than 30 years, until it was getting threadbare. So, I swapped it out for the first quilt I entered in the show in Paducah. The newspaper article was caused by a press release from the quilt show in Paducah--the local paper called to interview me. They put the wrong caption under the picture, but I forgave them because they were so flattering. It didn't win anything there (it did in a few smaller shows), but it was such an honor to get juried in that I didn't care. This quilt was made in 1986, and there's a bit of a story behind it, too. I had bunions on both feet. For many years, they didn't bother me, but when I started working as an RN, they soon started giving me grief. I asked around among RNs working on orthopedic units to see who they would choose if they were having bunion surgery, and scheduled it. I had once had a conversation with one of the surgeons, who recommended getting them both done at once, since otherwise, I might never go back for the second one. So, as the surgery got closer, I sewed this quilt top, on a machine, using a strip piecing technique. Then I added the borders and corner blocks. The day before the surgery, I got the quilt all basted and ready to quilt. The surgery was done outpatient, with a nerve block, and when I got home, I was going to start quilting, but my spouse said no way, and put the quilt out of my reach. The next day, though, he put everything on the coffee table next to the sofa--threads, scissors, needles, thimble. Picture me on my back on the sofa, with my feet up on a pile of 5 pillows, with the quilt in an 18" hoop, quilting away for hours every day for 6 weeks. Bill moved the hoop for me as needed. Being the OCD soul that I am, I used 6 colors of quilting thread plus black on the quilt. The black areas around the star have my favorite filler design--a 1.5" grid with 0.5" squares in each of the grid squares. The borders have a very Amish feather design flowing along, and again, I changed thread colors as the feathers moved across the color strips in the border. I called it "Midnight Rainbow with Amish Ancestors". Mom and Pop used that one from the 90's until Pop passed away in 2005. After that, it came back to me. Mom decided to get a day bed instead of using their full bed, and I made her a quilt and shams for that, which you will see tomorrow.