When my mom had her birthday a few weeks ago, Elisabeth (inspired by recent quilting afternoons) raided her own fabric stash (yes, my 5-year-old has her own stash. Doesn't yours?!) and chose her very favorite orange gingham to give to her Mimi as a birthday gift. But first she cut it up into little scraps "for Mimi to use for making a quilt".

My mom could have just let the little gift go, but she was so touched by it that she decided to make two patchwork trivets (one for herself, and one for Elisabeth) using the best scraps. Since there weren't many usable scraps of the orange gingham, she built these using other scraps she had in her stash (we are a family of stashers, by the way), with a lot of pink (all of our favorite color -- are you surprised?) and some doggies added for good measure. Aren't they cute? And oh-so-useful, especially as we're entering the season of warm comfort foods. (Are we really?)

uncommon grace