Mother's Day 2017

It is Mother's Day!  I've heard from my kids, people have posted pictures, we've prayed for our moms, living and dead.  My gift for the day is some quiet time while Richard goes into Mt. Vernon to shop for groceries.  The idea was that I would sew in peace.  When he left, the sky was grey and it did not look good for outdoor activities, but now the sun has come out (this happens a lot) and I feel like I'm wasting a beautiful day!

Before I got to that point I did spend some time in my sewing room.  I finished a quilting project for a Deuce Four soldier's baby son just last week and had to clean up the debris--spare fabric, trimmings that I keep thinking I'll find some use for, the pattern I misread--in order to have space to cut anything else out.  You can see where this is going.  One of the things I wanted to do in that quilt was add a little bit of Thomas, so I had cut a little bit from his desert BDU shirt? jacket?  and added

some chips of that fabric in the corners of a block.  So I've had a couple of uniforms and his combat boots sitting in that room for several months while I figured out what I was doing.  They've all been in a heap on the floor and I have ideas for using more of the fabric, but it just needed to be straightened up to fit in the room better.  The desert piece I'd already cut and handled.  The jungle piece:  I suddenly realized that the sleeves are rolled up.  The things he took to Iraq were meticulously folded when they came to us--this must have been in the stuff he left in storage when they left Ft. Lewis. 

Rolled sleeves. I'm pretty sure Thomas was the last one to wear this uniform, and clearly he had not had time to get it laundered before they left.  I looked at the boots, looked at the uniforms, and decided that the sewing part could wait for another day.  There's no smell of young man that I can tell, nothing to bury my nose in (and after twelve and a half years, no surprise) but I folded it all back up relatively neatly and put it down.  Another day.