UFOs Are Abuducting ME! The Luray Caverns Flowers Edition

Several weeks ago I was over at Mom's house helping her clean out her sewing room.  It had gotten out of hand after having to hurriedly make room in the two spare bedrooms several months ago...things just sort of got stacked in there and she was left with little room to get around and do her projects.  So she asked me to help, and little did I know that I would be coming home with four garbage bags of fabric, another two of notions, magazines, books and patterns, and then another 5 for Diane's Secret Stash.

There was one more bag, and it was chock full of unfinished projects in varying degrees of completeness.  A few of them just need to be quilted.  Some just need borders.  A handful are mostly pieced, but need to have pieces appliqued down...and then there are several fistfuls of coordinating blocks that are complete, but she never got around to putting them in a setting.

Then there were a few rescue missions.  There were a handful of paper pieced flower blocks that, when we moved here, got tossed in with something linty by the movers and so these blocks looked a mess.  Mom decided she didn't like the blocks enough to clean them up and put them in a pile that was set to be pitched.  Now I'm no dumpster diver, and I have never previously taken it upon myself to pick through the garbage...but I did pull these blocks out of the garbage pile.  They were just fuzzy...one of those sticky paper lint rollers, and these blocks would be good as gold.  So that's what I did. Pulled them from the garbage, and cleaned them up.

Once I laid them all out, I recognized them as these paper piecing patterns that were the same as the little ones she made me stitch up when I was 6.  I looked at the paper backings and sure enough they were from a lady out of Luray, Virginia.  Hey, a little slice of my childhood, can't be throwing that away!  I remember when I was 6, we went on a field trip with my school to Luray Caverns and that is probably when she got them.

 

Luray Caverns circa 1993. The abominable snow child on the right would be me.

But she really like the patterns and bought a bunch, which are now mine to make. I did my best to stay true to her fabric choices even though now the pieces are 20 years old.  Below, the beginnings of the sashing are modern fabrics, but the white settings for the blocks are hers from back in the day.

It needed a border, and after testing a bunch of 30's prints that looked okay, I found this border print at the shop.  I do not like it at all as a stand alone piece, but with this?  It does the trick!

Here's a better look at the border:

I need to nab a backing for it, and I'm thinking I'll take a stab at quilting it myself.  I figure, if she was going to just toss the blocks, then a homegrown quilting job won't be a big deal.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

And, this is just the first of several UFOs that have abducted me!