Grandmother's Flower Garden

My soon to be husband's mother called me last year about this time to see if I could sew a 'few' quilt pieces together for her. I figured hey, it probably couldn't be that rough. Then she described what they looked like to me, I still had no clue what she had or exactly how many. I said go ahead and mail them to me and I will check them out.

Enclosed was a note that said that these pieces were actually sitting in the attic of one of her relatives house and were found when they passed away. None of her family really knew what they were nor did they really want them. No big deal, until I started to look at them and realized there were not only initials on every single finished flower as well as the year in which they were sewn - ALL BY HAND! Ya, I bought hit the floor. I have never actually hand sewn much of anything, well nothing of this magnitude.




So I took them down to Tennessee Quilts to show Sandra and she was amazed as was everyone else in the store at what I had. I had to explain to his mom that this was something that could take me years to finish. I have decided that I am going to continue to hand sew each piece together with the white hexagon border. I feel it would ruin the aesthetics of the whole quilt if I were to use my machine. You read right.. I will hand sew all 92 pieces (most of which are not duplicates) and then hand quilt it all, just as it was intended. She would like a full size quilt for her guest room and two pillow shams to match. Which leaves me with several left over, enough to make another small lap quilt (to be finished at a much much much later date) for her daughter, Brian's sister. Now, I hope one day I will be able to get at least of the the two back to keep and show my kids to pass on. In the end I'm going to make a tag for the bag that will give the names of everyone who has worked on it and the dates, including myself..




Oh, did I mention I have a wedding I've been planning in May.. Ya this is mainly a in-the-car-trip project, for now anyway. Feel free to comment on how much I have gotten myself into!!