“Grannie’s 9-Patch,” in progress

If you stop by regularly, you probably know that a great deal of my crafty communications come via Talk To Me Tuesday, the crafty vlog project that I started last year.

The last month or so, I’ve talked a bit about some 9-patch blocks that my mom found at my grandmother’s house where she and my dad now live.  I learned to sew in that house from that same grandmother from a shoebox filled with squares of fabric cut from everything from old shirts to flour sacks, all for making 9-patch blocks.   When my mom offered the box of blocks to me, I was thrilled to take them.

The 9-patch blocks the day I received them.

Some of the blocks were already pieced in long, wonky rows. When I went to quilt retreat with my sewing circle in March, I spent quite a bit of time in between other projects picking those seams apart, pressing the blocks and repairing seams where the stitching was coming out.

The blocks came home as a stack of flat, but still wonky 9-patches. I measured and measured until I found the smallest consistent size and then took a deep breath and started squaring all the blocks to the same size. Once that was done, I did a little math and decided how big I wanted the finished quilt to be.

Thanks to some good advice from my friend Osie, I knew I wanted to use muslin for sashing. Her advice for the multiple and varied prints was a fabric to calm it all down. Muslin does the trick perfectly!

I still have outside borders to add, but once that’s done, it will be ready for quilting. My lovely friend Linda quilts most of my large quilts and does a super beautiful job of it.  The back of the quilt will be muslin and it’s final resting place will be on my very own bed.

These blocks were pieced by a variety of people, many which were different generations of grandchildren.  The value of these blocks is beyond words to me and I feel incredibly lucky to have this beautiful part-heirloom, part-contemporary quilt.

Happy quilting!

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