Earth Was Once A Garden Place • Quilt Finish

March 21, 2026March 25, 2026 Elizabeth E.25 Comments

One Sunday morning, mulling over the stunning news from the day before, I drove to church along a residential road. I had a view of the low mountain range in my city, the hills turned verdant green from the winter rains. The sun was bright and clear, the sight was glorious. A favorite hymn was playing as the choir sang “This earth was once a garden place, With all her glories common.”

The song finished, I went into church, but the idea of a place so beautiful and fresh lingered.

I wrote in my journal that night: “All day I couldn’t help but think about Eden, and how much we mortals seem to have missed the boat. To live with ‘glories common’ would be the best….I thought then — realized then — that perhaps it was I who was below my best abilities in bringing about ‘all glories common.’ “

I paused, reflecting: the best of the earth, the most beautiful flowers, the clearest streams and tallest mountains — our glories. Shared all together, without rancor, viciousness, greed, cruelty and just plain old revenge and stubbornness. It felt like too big of a task; I closed my journal and went to bed.

With this experience as backdrop, I sat in the quilting room the next morning, trying to tackle one of the prompts in the Stay At Home Round Robin. I knew I wanted to figure out how to write those words of the hymn, and to let this quilt be a garden quilt, a reminder that I could bring about my own version of Eden in pieces, in bits, in my best moments. I struggled with the “how to” of the words, working it out letter by letter. Many times I was discouraged. With encouragement from friends and from my always-supportive husband, I finally finished and pinned the word borders up around the existing quilt.

Then I looked at the center: it didn’t work at all. So I took that out, went to remake a new one but couldn’t find the pattern. So I drafted up my own, remade the center and carried on. (There’s a metaphor here somewhere, I think.)

So here it is: Earth Was Once A Garden Place. And it can be again, day by day, moment by moment, with gallons of forgiveness, bushels of forbearance, and volumes of truth and charity. It’s that dailiness that can be the hardest: to not cuss out the driver who cut you off, to be more patient with those you live with, to speak up when necessary and to find stamina to do the hard tasks in our lives. I often turn to quilting to have a respite, as well as to be a part of a community of others who are exercising their creativity, planting their seeds, growing their quilts and creations.

Over time, working steadily at the task, we may yet find a way to have our glories common–

Earth Was Once a Garden Place Greatest Hits

First, a huge thank you to the co-hosts of the SAHRR for 2026 (names and links at end of post). It was wonderful! The final Link-Up Party of all the participants’ quilts can be viewed *here.*

Beginning: choosing the center
Round 1: Hourglass
Round 2: Double
Round 2, Part 2: I made it a Double
Round 3: Animal Kingdom
Round 4: Curves
Round 5: Two Color
Round 6: Quilter’s Choice

This is the SAHRR 2026 Final Quilt.
I’ve revised and cleaned-up the free tip sheets I made for this journey, plus a couple more new ones for the final quilt. Click to download. Please do not copy or digitally distribute, but send anyone who wants one to this website to get their own. (NOTE: The tip sheets will live here on this post; the earlier versions will soon be removed.)

Many thanks.

#1 Free Download: Double Square Border

Double Border_OPQuilt Tip Sheet Download

#2 Free Download: Trees for the Neighborhood
(Houses are from my pattern Merrion Square Mini Quilt, enlarged to the size of the finished trees)

Making Trees_OPQuilt Tip Sheet Download

#3 Free Download: Curved Leaves All Around, aka Orange Peel Blocks

Orange Peels_OPQuilt Tip Sheet Download

#4 Free Download: Making Letters/Words

Making Words_OPQuilt Tip Sheet Download

#5 Free Download: Center Propeller Block 9″

Propeller Block_OPQuilt Tip Sheet Download

Quilt # 315, 62″ square

The founder of the Stay at Home Round Robin is Gail. The other cohosts are listed below:

300 Quilts · Free Quilt Pattern · Quilt Finish

Is a Tablerunner a Quilt?

May 30, 2021January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

When you are stuck, it is. I love those houses, but…No.

New favorite. I ordered two more yards.

I love having scraps of batting that are just the right size.

Letting us both rest after a few hours of quilting.

Here come the beauty shots. (Isn’t that little bee with the branch arms the cutest?)

I quilted whatever came into my head.

I haven’t measured it, I haven’t labeled it, but the saga of the Orphan-Blocks-into-Table-Runner is now complete. I’m sorry to say, it didn’t empty out my orphan blocks bin much. Now I have to think up another way to use some of those up. And I have to think up a name. These orphan blocks came from when I taught the First Monday Sew-day class of beginners about Square-in-a-Square, or Economy blocks.

I still love these little houses. Now I have the beginning of another quilt! Get the Pattern Lite here.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend.

Or, as my mother would say, Happy Decoration Day (some fascinating reading in this link). The weekend before Memorial Day, my mother and father would go out and decorate the graves of their grandparents and great-grandparents with flowers, the cemetary made beautiful with pots of mums everywhere. This is the gravestone of my Scottish gr-grandmother. I have two namesake gr-grandmother Elizabeths and I remember them both on this Decoration Day. While the origins of Memorial Day are generally thought to be about the war dead, because of my mother, I remember it also as a day to honor those long gone.

I think we can do both.

In case you need to whip up a flag quilt, here’s a quick free tip sheet to do so!

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Picties and Verities • Quilt Finish

February 10, 2021January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

*Picties and Verities,* quilt #243
71″ wide by 78″ tall

Finally!

This baby has a new name: Picties and Verities.

What, you ask? Well, that phrase was in a poem I read about a thousand years ago, and I liked it and wrote it down and of course I can’t find it now, because that’s my life, when even what we had for dinner last night is cause for wandering around in the corridors of memory.

Verities, defined: a true princple or belief, especially one of fundamental importance. Seems to me that striving to be happy, knowing that the sun shines on all of us, as well as the idea that it’s always good to go home — with or without your trailer — just have to be some verities.

Picties, defined: For this one, I went to my husband’s college Oxford Dictionary, a two-volume set complete with magnifying glass. Pict (rare, it says, from the 1400s) means to paint or depict or represent. I would say all those bits of appliqué up there qualify as little pictures. Of course the Picts were also the ancient name of people from North Scotland, and are associated with elves, brownies or fairies. And possibly old grey castles with dungeons (an allusion to its working title: Trapped in the Dungeon of Cute). And since my great-grandmother was from Scotland, I own that heritage with pride.

I sewed on buttons last Saturday, while listening to my Guild’s program, and added, as is my usual, “Made in the time of Covid-19” for anyone who receives this quilt after I’ve gone to the afterworld to frolic with Scottish fairies. You’ve seen photos of this, but here’s a last batch of fun.

And since you’ve read this far, I now treat you to one of my husband’s beautiful photographs, taken the last week of January:

We retraced his steps to take a look at it this past week, because in trying to identify what it was depended on what the plant’s leaves looked like: if they were cacti-looking, it was an aloe. If they were leafy, it was a kniphofia (aka Torch Lilly or Red Hot Poker). It’s an aloe, but it is a distant cousin to kniphofia, apparently. My husband Dave takes long walks everyday, bringing home pictures like this, reminding me of when my children used to bring me home bits and pieces of their days, spilling them out into the kitchen, a line or a thought floating backwards over their heads deep in the refridgerator.

It’s so nice to watch Dave gather his interests about him now, after having had his nose to the grindstone for years, bringing home the proverbial bacon to put in the fridge for those now-grown children. His process — of snapping pictures of whatever interests him and only later culling and choosing — reminds me of this quote from the artist Ann Hamilton:

“A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than of answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do….Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between.” (Ann Hamilton, artist)

Having had three finishes within a couple of weeks, and today teaching a workshop with the Surfside Quilters Guild, my next plan is to do some wandering myself, maybe some daydreaming and find those experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, yet are so critical.

And P.S. Blocks 4, 5 and 6 of Shine: The Circles Quilt are now back on the blog, free to all.

Other posts about Picties and Verities:

First Sighting of the Bee Happy Blocks
Making a Curve for the Dungeon of Cute
Bee Happy QAL Progress • June 2019
Be Happy in April 2020
Bee Happy Tutorial Sheets (tips written to go along with the pattern)

Sewing

My Small World • Section 3 & 4

November 6, 2019January 4, 2024 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

I know you are thinking, no — praying — that someday soon I will be through with This Quilt, and believeyoume, you are not the only one hoping and praying that I can add it to my list of Three Hard Quilts of 2019 to be completed. I’ve finished two Hard Quilts and I’m determined not to put any other quilt up on that design wall until I slay this Patchwork Dragon.

So I’m here to report progress: Section Three AND four are finished, hallelujah, but I’m celebrating probably less than you are because I have two more sections to go and I get stuck on the smallest things.

Like the flying geese in Section Three.

The approach I took the first time I ~~made~~ started this quilt was to pull every fabric out of my cupboards, strew them around and clip a square of this or a square of that and piece it into this quilt.

I occasionally try that approach again. Which doesn’t work, again.

The best approach is to see what you’ve already thrown into the first two sections, then replicate that, either via color/value or the actual fabric, if you can find it the mess. The completed flying geese, above — which you can see is sort of an amalgam of all the geese I tried.

I’m finding the paper piecing templates from Sarah of SewWhatSherlock very helpful, if you want to get yourself a set.

I also learned that I am truly stuck, lunch helps. And maybe read the newspaper. And then start in on the big shapes, letting the detritus come later.

I can work in new bits here and there, like this woman with her bird.

Or some fun repeated shapes, the appliquéd half-circle echoed in the fabric. I can’t decide if this yellow is a fancy front window, or two hidden doors, camoflauged, or a re-planted tunnel under this European-style gate to the city.

Then I charged into Section Four — and why not? the whole sewing room is already a disaster — hand-sewing clamshells and fussy cutting blocks, and cutting multiples of the lower section strips but finally deciding, and now these sections are sewn together: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4.

To recap: