Grandma's Flower Basket

How many of you have quilt "tops" tucked away somewhere in a closet, drawer or trunk?   You know, a family member cut and pieced together hundreds of pieces of fabric into a design and created the beginnings of a quilt.   Then, the family member died or the top just got lost in the shuffle of everyday life and never got turned into a completed quilt.

Well that happened to a family friend of ours.   When I was approached about completing the quilt I was a little hesitant because I wanted to be sure to finish the quilt the way the quilter would have wanted it quilted.   When the quilt came to me it had been pinned for years with pins that had deteriorated and rusted and left rust stains on the quilt itself.   I was dismayed.

 

The first thing I did was to remove all the pins and check to see if any repairs had to be made. Since the quilt already had the batting and a backing in place, I could move on to designing a quilt stitch pattern in keeping with the era of the blocks on the quilt. 

 

 

 I decided that all the lavender and white checkerboard blocks would be stitched with simple parallel lines of  stitching and the basket blocks would be outline stitched.  

I really like how the stitching looks on the plain white backing of the quilt. 

 The parallel lines of stitching look really cool along the four sides of the quilt where I stitched the "on point" squares into the four borders.

The quilt got a good long 2 day soak which removed most of the rust and stains and brightened up the white fabric that had yellowed a bit in storage.   Even though a few spots remained, the owner of the quilt was so thrilled to receive a completed quilt back into her arms.  

I must say, I felt pretty good about how it turned out and was so happy to finish what was started a long time ago by a kindred spirit, another quilter.

Keep on Stitchin',
Debbie