The "Quilt" Project

Forty-five years ago Linda's Grandma Hoggan

gave this beautiful flower garden quilt 

to us as a wedding gift.

Her one request was that we not just "display" it

but that we "use" it.....so we did!

over the years it began to deteriorate

both from use and age. 

You see, the quilt top was hand sewn about 1938

when Linda's mother, Ruth, was 6 or 7 years old

Ruth remembers helping....

it was her job to sort all the little pieces by color

then string them on individual threads.

Grandma would tell Ruth what color she wanted next,

then grandma lovingly sewed each piece by hand 

until this beautiful quilt top was complete.

The quilt consisted of 77 blocks with each block

containing 62 pieces for a total of 4,774 hand sewn pieces.

Each year for Christmas we try to give some kind

of Family History related gift to our

children.

This year we decided to give a 

piece of this quilt.

So Linda began....

She cut out each block

Salvaging as many blocks as possible

Then sorting the blocks by the

condition they were in.

Next she began shopping for material and frames.

Once the frames were decided on she knew

how much fabric to buy

Next came the task of unpicking all the

edge pieces

 to reveal the

pieces that had been folded under for the edge.

Once that was done each block was ironed and

then sewed onto the fabric.

 

Next came the task of composing the

"story" and adding the picture.

The picture was a composite of three separate

pictures that all needed photo editing and

took several hours, even days, 

to complete.

With blocks, story & picture done

 it was now time to set them

in the frames.

(we only broke and had to replace one piece of glass)

In all we made ten pictures.

Each story was customized for the person

the picture would go to.

Everyone seemed to like the gift and we were

excited to share this beautiful piece

of handwork made so many

years ago with each of our children, 

Linda's siblings and mother.