Last week I started cleaning up my the flat surfaces in the Quilt Studio, starting with the cut off backing and batting from the past 6 months of quilts. Among the finds was a length of Teahouse Garden which was long enough and wide enough to make 18 5″ finished 4-patch kaleidoscope blocks.

In addition to the cut off scraps, I dug around for the rest of the fabric and discovered I had just enough fabric  to make a total of 48 blocks — half cut as 4-patches and half cut as hour-glass units.  I had more more yard left so, it became the backing of this unplanned quilt.

Thursday afternoon I loaded it on the longarm and started quilting.  With just 2 half motifs left to quilt, my phone rang and I paused the machine so I could hear.

It was a now retired co-worker with devastating news. She has Stage 4 Lung Cancer and the prognosis is grim.

After getting off the phone I did what quilters do – looked for a quilt to send her. Nothing seemed right in my stack of recently finished quilts, so I went back to finish up Teahouse Gardens and realized I had been working on Anne’s quilt for the past week. Anne loves Bonsai.  In my mind I had just found Anne’s quilt.

It’s packed up to ship out in the morning and I totally forgot to get the final measurements.  But here are the rest of the stats.

• Started 3/16/2023
• Finished 3/24/2023
• Size before washing: 47 x 59
• Thread: Glide 40wt in Biscotti – 2 bobbins 12 SPI
• Quilting Motif: Flowers Spirals.  Lengthened to 18″ with a -3 Row Gap
• Batting: Legacy 80/20