My bosses daughter asked me late last year about making some quilts leftover from fabric her mom had. I told her in advance it would be well after April and it was lol. Apparently her mom used to hand quilt. Mom had a few blocks half made that were hand stitched but they were falling apart to the point I didn’t want to try and use them, and there wasn’t a lot left to choose from. She basically had a box of scraps. Some pieces were a half yard and some were 5 or 6 inches.

Looking at the prints there were likely from the 30’s or 40’s (her mom died 20+ years ago) so I wanted something simple to match what would have been a popular quilt when she was sewing. I used whatever fabrics I could get a 3 in square from and made simple 9 patch blocks. They still needed something so I hit the store and found 2 tone on tone creams that had a very vintage look and made hour glass blocks to go between the 9 patch blocks. Came out very vintage looking.

It wasn’t an easy tasks for me for a couple of reasons. One is I don’t care too much for scrappy looking quilts so using so many colors was outside my comfort zone. My friend Sue loves scrappy and said just use whatever you pick up next rather than trying to coordinate. That saved my sanity. The second was the odor. OMG that fabric had sat in a garage 20+ years in a cardboard box. It reeked of what I call old smell. You know that smell when you open a door and a house is full of old furniture, old clothes, etc. I didn’t dare wash it till I had it pieced and quilted so for weeks every time I opened my front door, you could smell it. Thankfully a little Gain laundry soap and some bounce dryer sheets and they smelled like new once they were washed.

She wanted it gift the 2 quilts to her daughters as something of their grandmothers so I made them almost alike. They have the same fabrics and one is quilted with swirls and one is quilted with hearts. She really liked them and I hope the girls love them as a reminder of their grandmother. I suggested she take the handmade squares her mom had in the box and carefully frame one for each daughter to display with their quilts.