It's hard to believe that my stepdad passed away 13 years ago. At the time, he and mom were living in San Diego and Howard and I were living in Needham, Massachusetts. Bill stayed in a nursing home for nine months after having a debilitating stroke. My mom had already retired and was able to be at his side constantly. She would visit him twice a day for several hours to make sure that he was being taken care of properly. I never saw him alive after his stroke because we lived so far away. Bill always called me the human loom because I was always knitting something different every time he saw me. In Needham, I continued to knit but also started to quilt. After Bill passed away, I helped mom go through his clothes and discovered a bunch of blue flannel pajama bottoms and thought they would make a great quilt to remember him by. He was obsessed with flying and airplanes so I backed the quilt with some airplane fabric that I found at the Franklin Mill Store in Franklin, Massachusetts. I can't believe that I remember that! (Confession, I remembered the location of the shop, but had to look up its name.) I created a plane template out of a manila folder and traced it with quilter's chalk in the non nine-patch squares. I quilted each plane separately and back stitched the heck out of each starting and stopping point - hoping that it would hold through multiple washings. Time will tell. Here's the plane fabric that I used for the backing. Also, I used my favorite technique of pieced binding. I love the "scrappiness" of it. PS The interface on blogger has not changed one bit in my three-year absence, which is both a blessing and very disappointing.