Two quilts and a view

We just returned from Utah where the hubby taught two seminars and visited with many, many clients. What did I do? Why I gazed intermittently at this beautiful view out of the windows of the townhouse while I worked on two quilts and visited with many family members.

The Civil War quilt is now on my mom's frame. I have stored it in Utah for almost 9 years always planning to have a quilt on that I could stitch while in Provo. Finally my dream has come true.

This is the hard wood frame that my mother purchased when she retired. She had 9 hand pieced quilt tops that had been given to her by her mother. Her goal was to hand quilt them all which she accomplished. Before I left I had the quilting done through the first row of blocks and sashing.

Shortly after I was married, I fell in love with a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt featured in Better Homes and Garden. I already had received one of Grandmother Rhoda's Double Wedding Ring quilts as a wedding gift. Greedy person that I am, I asked Grandma if she would make me a Flower Garden quilt if I purchased the material. She said "yes" and I did. I had the hand pieced quilt top in no time at all and my mother helped me quilt it on the old rickety quilt frames we used before she bought the above frame. You know, the ones with 4 soft pine boards and stands with a slot to hold the boards held together with c-clamps. And then came time to bind it. I was over whelmed and then discovered I was pregnant with #2. Time slipped away as I mothered.

Flash forward 35 years and picture a quilted top with untrimmed backing and batting sitting in linen closet after linen closet as we moved and grew as a family. I still couldn't decide what to do about the binding. Then I decided that it needed to be Nathan's. I looked at post after DIY post. Finally I came across something so simple and 1930's that I felt was just right. So I also took this quilt to Utah where I trimmed the back and batt even with the top.

Then I turned each edge in 1/4 inch and hand stitched them together reinforcing at the "v's." Each little hexagon will get a turn.

It is going to take a while to go all the way around but I am now one fourth of the way there. It has been a pleasure to work on this quilt. Every time I turn an edge, there are my grandmother's pencil marks where she had traced and then cut with scissors every one of those hexagons for me.

I saw this quote on another blog and it so aptly expresses how I have felt this week.

“A quilt is an object of peculiar intimacy. By virtue of the way it is created, every inch of the fabric is touched. Each scrap absorbs the quilter’s scent and the invisible oils of her skin, the smell of her household and, thanks to the constant pinning and stitching, her blood in the tiniest of quantities. And tears, though she might be loath to admit it.”

- from “The Goodbye Quilt” by Susan Wiggs