I see and touch a lot of quilts. With my work through The Linus Connection, literally hundreds of quilts will go through the hands of myself and the other volunteers when we distribute quilts each month. With that many quilts, it can sometimes slip my mind how special every quilt really is. It’s the time, the thought, and the effort that makes a quilt a quilt.
This quilt is very special, indeed. My mom unearthed it from a trunk in my grandmother’s house after Grannie passed away. It started out in my hands as an awkward UFO made of hand-cut (and perfectly proportioned!) flour sack blocks. These are not reproductions, these are the real deal, some of which still showed stitching marks from where the bags of flour were originally stitched closed.
It was very long, about eight blocks longer than you see in the photo here. It was narrow, too, just a long, skinny quilt top, with the occasional hole from being folded for 40 years (give or take a few). My mom estimates the fabrics themselves are much older because the original sacks were used as pillowcases before they were cut up for quilting.
The first thing I did was remove the extra length. Then, I very carefully removed the damaged blocks, most of which were across the middle, replacing them with some of the ones I removed from the length. All the blocks left over became new rows to make the top wider.
And then it sat in a bag in my sewing room for over a year.
It was my amazing friend Linda that inspired me to finish. She co-owns a long-arm quilt machine and was nudging our friends to share thing with her to quilt. I pulled out the border-less top and what remained of a bolt of muslin I bought several years ago. There was the perfect amount for borders and backing. Poking around my supplies, I realized I had batting, too! Obviously, the quilt needed to be complete.
Yesterday, Linda returned the quilt to me, which I have named “Grannie’s Trunk Quilt.” I added binding and washed the quilt – the first time this fabric has been washed in ~40 years! It washed up beautifully, crinkling just the way an old quilt should.
What will I do with it now that it’s done? I think it’s going back to the farm house where it began. It’s journey would be full circle then, and that feels right to me.
So, Mom, this quilt will be coming home soon. I hope you like it.
A close up of the beautiful fabrics and the scrunchilicious quilting.
Linda added flowers in the border, such a wonderful touch!
(L-R) Grannie, my sister Stephanie, Pa, me, and towering over us in the back, my “little” brother, Nathan. March 1994.
Thanks once again to Amy for hosting another wonderful Blogger’s Quilt Festival. I hope you’ll join in, too!
Happy Quilting!
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