My current quilt project

I am working on a very special project right now. In my last post I mentioned that I had a quilt that my granny had started as a young woman. I had "misremembered" the details, so I went back to the original post that I did over 10 years ago, when my Aunt Coez had given me the quilt blocks. It was HER granny (my great-grandmother, Little Granny) who had started it and given it to her. Coez was about 15 when she got them, so that would have been in the 1940’s. She never finished the quilt, but she wanted someone in the family to finish it and treasure it. I promised her that I would do something with it.

the original blocks

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a quilter. I don’t have the skill or patience to do that kind of precision work. I also no longer have the eyesight to work on tiny little HAND-SEWN hexagon pieces. The material is also very old and some of it is quite fragile. But I finally figured out a way to use the blocks in a way that I am capable of managing.

Since the material is so old, I don’t want this quilt to be “used”. I only plan to use half of the blocks to make a lap-sized rag quilt to go across the foot of the bed in our smaller guest room. I was able to find enough material that I liked for the project from my stash. I’m alternating rose and tan fabric for the back and using white flannel for the middle (which isn’t seen except for the “ragging”). I removed all the old muslin and green cotton that was meant to be used to piece the blocks together. Then I appliqued the flower blocks to new muslin and used a decorative stitch to quilt the blocks.

appliqued, but not yet quilted

finished (quilted) block

I’ve got all the blocks appliqued and half of them quilted. I’ve sewn the quilted blocks together in two rows of five blocks each, which is half of the quilt.

front and back of what I've gotten done

halfway done (except for ragging)

I’m very excited to see how the finished project will look! I'll be sure to post a picture of it when I'm done. It will be special to me no matter what…knowing the finished quilt will be a collaborative effort of Little Granny and me that was about 80 years in the making!