When my brother-in-law's aunt died, he and his brothers were charged with cleaning out the house and dividing up property since she had no children. As the only quilter in the extended family, I was given a little cardboard box that had these eight pieced blocks, the cardboard templates, her little rusty pins, her drawing of the block on the back of stationery from her work (I love that part!) and the scraps of leftover red fabric and what appears to have been a sheet or a man's shirt that was being repurposed. One block actually has the writing from the cleaners on it.
Now -- what in the world do you do with this? You put it on the shelf and forget about it -- that's what you do! And I did.A few years later, I found the box and was looking at the blocks -- can you see the boo-boo she made in setting one of the corner blocks--and decided maybe I could make my brother-in-law a quilt for Christmas out of Aunt Hortense's blocks. He did not have a quilt from me and I wasn't sure he would really even like to have one -- but I felt certain that he would appreciate the effort.
So - I played with layouts and knew that to stretch eight hand pieced blocks into a large lap quilt, it was going to take a lot of fabric, setting blocks, and letting go of some of my "rules".
And it began: I laid it out a number of ways, "scooched" and wiggled the blocks to square them, and made this quilt. All I can say is -- it was so worth it! This is a treasured and appreciated piece by my brother-in-law and may be one of the most loved quilts I've made.
Perhaps someone will come along who doesn't know me and finish something I've started one of these days....I hope you're finding time to piece and quilt! Jan
