Nancy Mahoney's Granny's Stars (Best Estate Sale Ever)
A few years ago, my husband and I were at the estate sale of a quilter. I was not a quilter at the time but had found it intriguing. The family offered to sell me ALL of the woman's quilting stuff for $10. Now, they had already given her machine and fabric to her quilting friends, but for $10, they sold me a couple of rotary cutters with lots of spare blades, a portable craft table, a cutting mat, a couple different sizes of Omnigrip rulers, and lots of other stuff. Tons. I knew then it was a bargain, but now that I've been doing this a while, I know just how much of a bargain it was. A serious wow.
It was fate.
One of the things in my new treasure trove was a July/August 2009 issue of Fons & Porter, with her address label still on it. My benefactor's name was Frankie S. On the cover was a beautiful quilt designed by Nancy Mahoney, called Granny's Stars. I loved it, but it wasn't a beginner's quilt. I was intimidated. So I made a few other quilts first, always with that one in the back of my mind. Finally, I felt ready. Start to finish took me about 15 months because I get too busy with work sometimes to spend time on my hobbies. This is machine pieced and machine quilted by me. I don't have a longarm, so I quilted it on my home sewing machine, a Brother PQ1500S. I added an inner border to make it queen size but other than that, followed the pattern. Except I put the leaves on backward. LOL
So to Frankie S, wherever you are, thank you for starting me on this journey.