The Quilt Files, Episode 16

Grandma edition!

It's almost Thanksgiving, which of course makes me think of family and family gatherings and PIE! (Sorry, no pie with these quilts, but I'm already salivating at the thought of pie right now and I get distracted easily.) In addition to getting ready for Thanksgiving, I'm trying to collect photos from all my cousins of the quilts my grandmother has made for her 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. We were talking about quilting a while back, and I mentioned I had finished a quilt and this time I remembered to take a photo of it before mailing it off. She sighed and said she'd wished to do that with all her quilts, but it was too late to bother with it now. I thought, ooo! Christmas idea, and have been steadily collecting photos from my cousins ... not all of them, I'll have some arm-twisting to do this weekend, but maybe I'll have the album ready for Christmas if not Thanksgiving. With all the thoughts of family and Grandma and quilting, I thought that this month I would feature the two quilts Grandma made for me and Boy.

This quilt, the Star Spin design, wasn't actually made for me. When TSU and I got married in the summer of 1987, Grandma hadn't taken up quilting yet. She spent a lot of her years after retiring practicing oil painting (I have some nice ones hanging up in my workroom), and when she got tired of that she decided to try quilting. Grandma started quilting around 1988 or 1989, and soon afterward my cousins started getting married (3 in 1990 alone) and Grandma started making quilts for wedding gifts. (We did get a quilt from Grandma and Grandpa for our wedding, but it was made by a church guild and has not lasted as long as our marriage; it's seriously frayed. And it's pink.) She eventually realized that all her grandchildren except me had a quilt from Grandma, so she told me I could have this one when she was done with it. After my grandfather passed in 2001, Grandma moved out of her house into assisted living, and this quilt moved into my house, where it keeps us warm all winter long.

After she finished making quilts for all her 11 grandchildren, Grandma could have taken a well-deserved rest. But the next generation started making an appearance, beginning with Boy in early 1994, so Grandma went back to the fabric store and started over. She's now got 11 great-grandchildren, and a grand total of 22 quilts. This is Boy's Twin Star Quilt, which for now just hangs on a quilt display rack, since it's a queen-size and too big for his bed. You can probably tell that by now Grandma had discovered the fun of using cotton batiks for the fabrics, and she found some really lovely ones for this quilt. I'm sure when he finally gets to the age where he has his own house, he'll really appreciate this lovely remembrance of his Great-Grandma. She's still quilting at age 93; after all, you never know when another great-grandchild might arrive!