More Quilty Hugs

Welcome to Treadlestitches!
Thanks to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, many of us are participating in her annual Hands2Help drive, which saw 876 quilts donated last year.  Maybe this year will be even better.

Last week I showed you this quilt as a top.  I hurried up and quilted it this week to donate to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo.

I found this backing fabric in my stash.  It has been there at least 10 years, waiting for just the right project.  The binding is a pink/purple print I bought in a bundle at Goodwill a few years ago.

I thought this would be my last quilt for Hands2Help this year.  After all, we're down to the wire in terms of time.  The quilts need to be completed in the coming week.  And I was actually ready!

But then I thought about the people I have loved who have had cancer, and faced chemotherapy.  Some were women, but most were men.  The quilt I had made was very girly.  I needed to make another quilt, one that would be more appealing to a man.

My dog Bella is helping me show the new top.  I hope to get it quilted this weekend.

There are 9 blocks, each with a center cut from a fish fabric.  The background squares in the corners of the block are a canoe print, that also has fish, paddles, and sailboats.  The dark blue border is a sailboat print.  The theme would work for a woman, but would not be off-putting for a man.

The pattern is called Railroad Crossing, and comes from the book Charm School, by Vanessa Goertzen.

(By the way, there are lots of fun patterns in here for charm squares!)

I thought about my Dad while I worked on this quilt.  When he was a teenager, he ran away from home one summer and went to Michigan, where he worked in a hotel and learned to love the Great Lakes.  At the end of the summer, he went back home, but it really changed his life.  When he was old enough, he joined the Coast Guard, and was eventually stationed on a lighthouse.

When Dad was diagnosed with cancer, he decided not to have chemo, since the prognosis was not good even with it.  For him, it was the right choice, but other situations are different, and there have been advances in chemotherapy in the more than 30 years since he got sick.   If there is even a small thing I can do to help a cancer patient, like making a lap quilt, I am happy to do it.
I'm donating this quilt in memory of my Dad.

The oregano is coming on strong in our little herb garden next to the garage.  I'm drying bunches of it in the kitchen.  If you're local and want some, let me know.  You can come and cut it safely.

My oldest daughter and her two kids came by yesterday, and brought Little Buddy some birthday presents--a dino backpack and a dino print hat.  He immediately decided it was a paleontologist outfit, so he was a paleontologist the rest of the day, hunting for dinosaurs.  We found a few, too!

My dear hubby and I went to Cedarburg Bog on Wednesday to walk in the woods. I had a hard time keeping up with him because I was taking so many photos of all the wildflowers, like the trillium above.  It still seems odd to go somewhere by ourselves in the middle of the week.  Little Buddy's mom is only working on Fridays for now, so we're no longer full time babysitters.

This is Watt's Lake, part of the Cedarburg Bog Natural Area.  Water is very high around here, due to recent rains.
One of Little Buddy's favorite shows has been Dinosaur Train, on PBS.  The paleontologist on that show, Dr. Scott, has a tag line for the kids.  He says, "Go outside, get into nature, and make your own discoveries!"
Good advice!
I am wishing for happy discoveries for all of us this week.
Cheers for reading,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday
Angela at So Scrappy
Cynthia at Oh Scrap