Long Time Gone

I looked in the Long Time Gone pattern book (the size of a magazine!) and it looks like I am nearing the assembly stage.  I had been dreading making the courthouse steps blocks with 1.25" logs, but they turned out to be fairly easy.  The half-square triangles were murder, and I am not looking forward to the pineapple blocks.  But I have been working steadily.  Here's a sampling of what I have made in the last week.

These blocks will not be near each other in the finished quilt, and there will be sashing.  I think they look very dark now.  I had thought I'd use a cream sashing, but now I'm thinking of a whiter fabric to tone down the gloominess of it all.  The prints, both blue and beige, are Civil War-like, but there are some other scraps mixed in.  Right now I'm working on a section with 60 degree triangles.  I have paper pieced those because they aren't truly 60 degrees, but rather 53 degrees.   No ruler I have - and I have quite a few - worked.  Luckily, I found a website with free 2.5" ones to print out.

I was surprised and pleased to receive a package from the Netherlands yesterday.  My niece (actually, my cousin's daughter) and her boyfriend sent me two photos they had blown up and framed of our visit last spring and a plaque that reads, in Dutch, You are the sweetest aunt.  

Some peppermints were in the box, too.  I sat right down and wrote a thank you email in Dutch.  My Dutch is pretty bad and stuck in 1952 which is when we immigrated, so I labored a bit and used Google Translate, too.   But Karin will appreciate my trying.  They told me this spring that they always sleep under the red and white sampler quilt I made them.  I wonder if it's big enough, though, since Marco is 7'1" tall!