Four Generations

As some of you may be aware, we lost our dear Nan in June.  She was in her nineties and we miss her very much.

Nan did a lot of handwork over her life, many pieces I am lucky enough to own.  She was prolific in her craft, and did the most divine, intricate embroidery over her earlier years.  At about 85 or so she had an operation on her wrist for her carpal tunnel, and that sadly left her unable to hold a needle as well as she would like to.  Not to let little issues like that get in her way, she took up crocheting for the last few years of her life.  One cannot have idle hands.  I could barely keep up with new patterns for her.

She had many grand daughters, and decided to make each one an embroidered cushion, because whilst the very delicate work now escaped her, she was able to make candle-wicked things.  I would draw her up a candlewick design, most of which I found in Hoop Love, a Flickr group online.  I’d draw them onto a twelve inch piece of calico, she’d stitch them to her heart’s content and make the cushions out of the panels.  After she had made all of her grand daughters and great grand daughters a cushion, she was running out of people to gift things to.  I suggested she keep making the panels, as long as she was enjoying it what did it matter how many she made?  The result was another fifty blocks.

What to do with these blocks?  None of them really went together as a group, because she just stitched the ones that took her fancy.  I decided to throw them all together into two truly heirloom quilts – and when they were complete, I would give them to my girls.

So that’s what I did.  I stitched the blocks into a quilt, trimmed it with lovely crochet lace, and my mother free-armed the quilting on her long-arm machine.

So – the quilt was made by one generation, stitched together by a second generation, quilted by a third generation and loved by a fourth.

 

It’s really hard to get a good picture of this quilt – cream doesn’t really work well for photographs.

I photographed each block for you to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of the back here…I think Mum did a beautiful job.

 

 

 

So that’s that.  A lovely, lovely heirloom for my girls.  This is obviously just one of the quilts we have made, the other is still at Mum’s waiting to be quilting.  But as Mum’s quilting business takes off, the non-paying customers (me) have to wait a little longer.

Hope you enjoyed that.  I’ve so many wonderful bits of work that my Nan has made – she is everywhere in my house.  I’ll show you some more another day.

Thanks for your company,

Suzie