Finishing Mom’s Final Quilt

Since finding a little more time, I’ve been working on finishing sewing projects. My grandson’s quilt is actually being quilted, another quilt top and a shirt for my husband are finished, and I’m currently working on a quilt top mom let go by the wayside probably 10+ years ago. It’s a big (mainly) wool log cabin quilt. It needed two additional blocks made, and I am now on to trying to square up the strips of blocks mom machine pieced together… badly. If time was in great abundance, and I was a more patient human, I’d ‘un-sew’ the eight strips of blocks she created. But because neither of those things are, well, a thing (I have lots of other projects I want to get to!), and my husband had amazing words of wisdom, “Don’t make it something it isn’t.” I am going to work with what I’ve got. Except for the blocks that were hand basted together… Those got taken apart!

Working with this piece is like doing archaeology. It’s apparent that mom started this project, or got to the assembly stage, after dementia was part of her life. She was too good a seamstress and sewist in general to have made the mistakes she did. Also, when going through her wool stash (much of which was from clothing) for materials to make the two missing blocks, I came across a piece of clothing that she’d taken the arms off of for the quilt. She then tried to baste the arm-holes back together as though what once was a jacket could be made into a vest, despite the uneven cutting and not enough fabric left to actually make a hem. This basting was done in the same thread the quilt blocks were basted in.

So, the block corners won’t match, much less be square. I am pleased to work on this project. It’s something I can do for her, and kind of with her, in that I can, mostly, grok what her intent was.

I’ll post pictures as it comes together.