Eureka!!!  Another box - another treasure trove.  I can't quite believe it!  So, here is the back story - you know, there has to be one!  Mike and I got married in 1985, once for the Navy in June and again here at home in September for friends and family.  At that time, my step-grandmother, Clara Lydick, was a busy quilter.  She made beautiful quilts, some with piecing material into patterns and some making the blocks using embroidered scenes she stitched herself.  All - and I mean every stitch - was hand-done.  No machine for her!  Right down to her signature!

So for our wedding, she made us a queen size double wedding ring - pink solid (for me) and navy blue small patterned material (for Mike).  We used it a good bit.  We also used a lightly busy quilt she had made be a few years before I met Mike.  I just loved them both - I've tried my hand at quilting and have a huge respect for those talented folks.

Back in 1994, Mike's parents were coming East, traveling across the country, putting small down payments on houses for those of their children who didn't own, but rented instead.  That would have been us, for one!!~  We were frantically getting ready for them - we lived in a small-ish (though 2 story) house in Vienna but not much room for company.

So, we got a storeroom and packed up a bunch of stuff to make a spare room ready for them.  We decided in tape the boxes with blue painters' tape - that way we would know those were recent deposits to the storeroom in the event it may be a while before we would access them.  And, not much time for fancy labels or lists as the Griffings would be here any day that year!

Who knew it would be 20 years before these blue taped items would surface!?!?!?  Sad and embarrassing to say, but there you go!   We knew these boxes made their way from storeroom an attic or basement and perhaps another storeroom, like a carousel - "Where she stops, nobody knows!!" as the carnival barkers used to say.   But to actually get to delve into them was not to be.

Till NOW!!  Our beloved quilts have surfaced after being nicely folded in a light plastic trash bag in a cardboard box - none the worse for being hidden all that time.  A trace of an older closed-up fabric smell, but nothing a nice tumble in the dryer won't fix.  We thought we'd try that tonight since our once balmy weather (last week between 50 and 60) has crashed - it's 18 out now with a wind chill of 2, at 10:15 on Sunday night, January17, 2016.  Full laundering tomorrow.

So - not a numbered box, not on a list, but fondly remembered and things are happy all around!  The quilts are breathing fresh air and I'm breathing a sigh of relief!