As you know, Bob, 2023 is the Year of Finishing All the Projects. One of those projects was a quilt I wanted to make from thirty antique sunflower motifs I’d reclaimed from an old quilt I’d found in a j/u/n/k/ antique store. The circular motifs were originally sewn to curved sections of white cotton cloth that formed a square, but the white cotton had frayed so badly that the squares were falling apart.

I’d decided to carefully unpick the sunflower motifs from the cotton fabric, applique each motif directly onto a new white cotton square, then set the squares in a lattice of sunflower fabric and dark green squares. That was at least ten years ago and the pile of sunflower motifs still attached to their old surrounds and the cut-out lattice pieces have languished in a tote bag in my office closet for all that time.

But no more. This week I got down to the business of unpicking all the motifs and appliqueing them to white-on-white patterned squares (I like it better than plain white fabric). So far I have two rows completed with another six to go and a four inch border to add (still don’t know what the border fabric will look like but there’s some nice sunflower patterned fabric at JoAnn’s right now) and these old sunflowers will get a new shot at life in a full-sized quilt. Also, since they’re appliqued to new fabric they won’t be under the stress their old surrounds endured and should last fairly well once the top is done and quilted to the backing and batting.

I also found out that one of my local quilt shops offers time on a long-arm machine at an hourly rate, no previous experience needed. Guess who’s going to start quilting all of her finished big tops next month? *grin*