thanate | things finished

As of a couple hours ago, I've now been out in the world for thirty-four years; in my personal (instinctive and not-relevant-to-anything) numerology, that's probably the nicest number I get in the years of boring ages between 32 and 37. Normally, I would have at least a vague list of year-or-so goals at this point, but this does not seem like a particularly useful time to be making long-term plans, and there's enough of a to-do list for the next month or two to keep me busy. I may instate a 50 words per day writing goal sometime soon, by way of making myself think about things, but probably not today.

There are beautiful wintery actual amounts of snow coming down right now (we're up to about 1/2" accumulation) and I am working on getting all my watching it out the windows in before it warms up and turns to rainy slush later this evening. Either way, this is more winter than we've had since the year before last, so yay for that.

And then there's this:

The summer that my grandmother was eleven years old, she and her best friend decided they were going to make quilts to keep themselves occupied while school was out. My grandmother provided the solid fabrics, and her best friend provided the patterns-- a thing which apparently *her* grandmother had somewhat cross words about, as the prints were the original feedsack fabrics and not as pricy to obtain. (For those of you not familiar with the concept, there was a while during the depression where animal feed was actually packaged in cheap cotton prints so that rural families could reuse them for quilts and clothing. Some quilting manufacturer started reprinting a few of the patterns as a "Feedsacks" line around 2005 or so, though most of their choices are not patterns I find particularly attractive.)

At any rate, my grandmother pieced these blocks by hand that summer (and did a lovely job of it), and at some later point she put them together with some newer white muslin on a sewing machine to make a quilt topper roughly sized for a twin bed. I don't know if that was the intention or not; it's a little short in the long dimension, but also perfectly good for something to curl up on the couch with. In any case, it then spent the next half-century or more folded up in a plastic bag in a succession of closets. A couple summers ago, it got pulled out at a family reunion, and I offered to finish it.

Every block of the original has a different print in it, but of course none of the feedsack reproductions currently available overlap at all. I did manage to find one that made a nice contrast to the quilt as a whole, and mirrors the flower shapes in a couple of the blocks (and another which went with the general feel, but which I didn't end up using for more than the tabs to hang the finished quilt with, as I changed my mind about doing a double binding, and didn't much like the print anyway.)

Machine quilted with bamboo batting (because it is awesome) and tabbed along the top to hang on a wall if desired. Summer 1931-December 2012.

Incidentally, the quilt that's on the bed underneath this one was made by my mother's older sister back when she was part of a quilting guild. (Before I was born, I think.)

If anyone has got a burning desire for the fabric the tabs are made out of, I have almost a yard and a half of it that I'd be happy to trade for something I like.