My cousin Gloria Bargeron gave me an unfinished quilt top that she thinks our grandmother made.

During the ice/snow/sleet storms of Feb 2015, I was looking for something to work on and couldn’t get out to a fabric store.  So I pulled this out. I had already washed it with OxyClean and most of the stains came out.  Parts were hand sewn with inferior thread and had to be ripped out and re-sewn.  And I had to even it up enough for it to lie flat.  Fortunately I had 2 pieces of blue flannel that together could be the backing.

My grandmother quilted by hand, usually in arcs that my father said she marked by holding a piece of chalk, planting her elbow and swinging her hand.  It would have taken me at least weeks – probably months – to hand quilt this, so I machine quilted it.  But I devised a pattern of arcs that start at each corner and overlap to create diamond shapes.

This quilt ended up going to our cousin Marie, who did not have a quilt that Granny Bargeron made.

 

This shows the assortment of fabrics.  There are several different white fabrics, including 2 piques.

                                                        These show my grandmother’s strong sense of economy – piece the squares to use every possible snippet of fabric!

                                                This shows the pieced back and quilting pattern.