My sister-in-law found these quilt squares in her grandmother's scrap box. They were pieces made by her great-grandmother or maybe even great-great-grandmother. Since her grandmother's vision isn't as great as it once was, Christina wanted to make a quilt out of them for Mother's Day and give it back to her.
Late this winter she asked if I would help her out. Between work, school, and family she wasn't going to get it finished in time.
It was so neat to be able to work with these squares and think about how things were in times gone by. All the stars were hand-sewn. It's hard to believe the amount of time it would have taken to sew them together. Probably many cold winter days when there wasn't much else you could do.
Also, you can tell that this was made in a decade when you wasted nothing. I'm assuming all these squares were made from scraps left over after she would have made clothes for the family or maybe even cut from the good part of clothes that were worn out. Finally, by looking at each star closely you can see not all pieces match. (If you look at the photo below in the far right square, The black is accented with red, but the red pieces include red plaid, solid red, and even a few are tan pieces. Together they finish one star.)
In all there were 55 stars, one short of a 7 by 8 square quilt. At first we left it as a solid cream square, while we tossed around ideas of how to spice it up.
Christina then found the perfect quote to have embroidered on it. "Families are quilts, pieced with memories, bound with love."
Piecing the squares together to make the quilt top was the easy part. Quilting it together was a little more challenging. All the star squares weren't all the same size ranging from 7 inches to 7 1/2 inches. In the end I hope I was able to quilt it with minimal puckers and have each piece lay flat.
The finished product is a unique quilt filled with different shades of blues and reds with some black and browns mixed in. No two squares are the same even though some are very similar.
