Carry On

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to make a memory quilt using shirts that belonged to my very dear father-in-law, who passed away in July.

I'm leaning towards a patriotic/military theme, and so I want to have stars as part of the pattern. The only thing  I have decided on as yet is to applique a star (or stars) from each shirt fabric onto a plain background.

I was poking around the yard sale items at our quilt guild's latest show and I came across these cardboard stars:

Perfect templates for applique, and 3 sizes to choose from!  The best thing is that they had the name of the quilter who had donated them written on the back.  Her name is Dot, and she is the sweetest lady in our guild.  She is well into her eighties, and I have known her for many years.   I gladly paid my 25 cents for the templates, and went to find Dot among the quilters at the show.  She was tickled pink when I told her that I would be using her templates for a memory quilt.

Today I made seven freezer paper stars by tracing the template, and ironed them to the shirt fabrics to be ready for applique.

This will be a challenge to applique all those points.  At least 2 of the shirts were polyester, and the light blue in the upper right corner is seersucker.    In the words of Tim Gunn , I'm just going to  have to "make it work".