*all pics are clickable to see "in big"

ETA: Welcome to visitors from Field Trips in Fiber!

July first is a holiday here in Canada, known as "Canada Day". Formerly known as "Confederation Day" - it memoralizes and celebrates the unification of Canada as a single country. I spent our National Holiday celebrating all things Canadian, and therefore, took my Canadian self to my sewing room to celebrate me - by quilting. :)


I've been working on all of my "must finish" projects for quite some time (two weeks) and was feeling rather sorry for myself. *hee!* Not only was I working on things I had to do as opposed to selfishly making things for me, I had further limited myself to making things only with my stash for the months of June and July. (Wah, wah *heh* Seriously though, I've loved all the projects I'm working on.) I decided that a reward was in order for all my good behaviour, so I decided to make something quick, fresh and pretty. I remembered I had the pink pinwheels that I ended up not using in "Spring Forward", so this was the result:




I'm quite pleased, because in my eyes, it covered the brief - fresh and summery, pretty and lightening fast! It's an extra-long double (so it can be pulled over a pillow), but is composed of only 15 pinwheel blocks and long and/or wide strips of sashing and borders.

While engrossed in a physical task, my mind often wanders to other places, so it was while I was quilting the swirls in the sashes (similar to soft ice cream swirls) that I was reminded of summers as a child; when my mother, father and "the kids" as we were called (myself and my two brothers - the youngest children in our family), would travel to the cottage on the weekends.

The way to the cottage was through dairy country and, surrounded by dairy farm after dairy farm, we would drive by stands that sold fresh milk, cream and cheese. Our favourite stop of course, was a little hut that sold home-made ice cream.
Sometimes on the way to the cottage, but more often on the way back, we would stop and get ice cream; and though I sometimes chose pistachio on those late Sunday afternoons, I almost always ended up with strawberry.

In a big sugar cone that I had to hold with both hands, were two huge scoops of fresh, delicious vanilla ice cream lightly flavoured "pink" as I called it, by the gigantic chunks of frozen summer-sweet field strawberrries. On the particular day that I remember, we had stopped at the ice cream stand just after lunch. I was wearing a white dress patterned with cherries and a red pinafore/smock over it (handmade by my mother)that I loved and which I had been cautioned by father as we got out of the car to not get dirty, because we were going straight to afternoon service at church.

I stood on tiptoe beside my brothers, peering over the counter at the white plastic pails of ice cream in the freezer, pretending to waffle between maple nut and cherry ice cream (when I knew I would get strawberry); waiting impatiently while my brothers similarly waffled over their choices. My brother T finally decided to get one scoop of rainbow ice cream and one scoop of strawberry amd my other brother got rum n'raisin. Being the youngest (and a girl), I had to wait until last to get my ice cream but finally, that delicious cone was in my hands.

Having been standing on tippy-toe to get the cone from the lady, I wasn't holding it as tightly or as surely as I wanted to be. I could also feel that the ice cream itself was rather precariously placed on the cone, but I planned to remedy that by pressing it down with my tongue once I was away from the counter.

Sadly, as I turned to walk back to the car, both of my beautiful, delicious ice cream scoops fell to the ground! I turned and looked beseechingly at my father, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said something like "Should have been more careful". As my eyes welled up in disappointment, I pled my case - but he remained steadfast in his decision. No more ice cream for me. Crying, I was walking towards the garbage can to throw my cone away when my oldest brother, T, came to my rescue like a knight on a white horse.

"You can have my strawberry scoop", he said.

My tears dried mid-drop as my father helped with the transfer and I watched as that precious cargo made its way to my cone. I don't remember whether I thanked T, although, given how we were raised, I'm sure I did(!), but I do know that I often recall that gift when I think of my older brother, and realized as I wrote this that I never gave him enough credit for the kindness and love he had in his little boy heart for me that ran as strong, or perhaps even stronger, than his delight in torturing and teasing me.

As I quilted, vignettes from those carefree summers when I was a little girl ran through my mind, and so, as an homage to the day that my big brother showed me his heart, I put a few strawberries in each corner, and called this quilt "Strawberry Sundae".