Legacy Quilt

 I put the big projects off until we're snowbound and shut in for several days.  

 I wanted to learn to free-motion quilt, using my best sewing machine.  I watched several YouTubes this Fall and was sure this was going to be easy peasy.  I started this project before Christmas and it seemed too tedious - pushing all that large quilt through the small arch on my sewing machine. (I broke several machine needles in the process of turning and tugging on the quilt.)  With being shut-in for this past week -- I decided this was the time.

In November and December I did all the pre-prep:  bought quilting feet for my sewing machine, fusible batting (which didn't really stick) and layered the backing, batting and top, then ironed the quilt sandwich together.  I even rolled it up on 2 pool noodles that I had secured together. 

It is a star quilt -- 12 large blocks of 8-pointed stars.  The fabric was mis-matched which gave an indication that it was pieced from fabrics during the depression.  The muslin fabric had stained from the sizing in the fabric.  I had tried several different methods of washing it to remove the stains and finally tea stained it in my washing machine. It gave the tan muslin a pinkish look - some of the fabric was not treated and the colors ran -- all adding to the appearance of an older quilt.

I could imagine that some of these small strips came from dresses, shirts and other clothes they had sewn. 

My maternal grandmother, Ida Brian, made several quilt tops and I received 3 of those unfinished legacy gifts stitched by either my grandmother or great grandmother*, who had lived with my mom's family from time to time.  I hand-quilted the first two and gave to our girls - but this one - I decided I would try to machine quilt since it was the first of the quilt tops sewn together on the sewing machine.

>Grandma was quite sick with severe asthma every Fall from August until an October freeze.  My mother and her dad would stand at the end of her bed and watch her struggle to breathe.  A few years before her death, they moved 7 miles away from that home and she was never sick again.

This week as I sewed, I remembered  the bits and pieces I knew of my grandma Ida who died suddenly from a heart attack when I was 6 months old.  She was only 55.

> My mom passed on little gems of wisdom from her sweet momma:

Never start a project on Friday -- it will not be successful.

If your man is headed out on a "trip to town" and asks you to go -- leave the dishes and go with him.

This pic is their wedding picture.

 When my uncle Willis was in WWII she crocheted a lot.  Her words:  "You can't count stitches and worry too."

"Don't come home griping about your husband - I'll take his side every time.  Go work it out."

Great Grandma Brian's story

> *The family story is Grandma Nellie and Grandpa Nathan's son with his large family moved into her house after she became a widow.  When she would get tired of the crowded conditions, she would come and stay at my grandparents -- her son Verner and daughter-in-law., Ida  She bought a bed to stay there and told my mother it was to be hers.  I inherited that bed and it's one of my family treasures.  

In finding their obituaries in a family album - I find out that Grandpa Nathan served as an elder in the Church of Christ in Mt. Erie, IL until his death from cancer.

Grandma Ida's story

Grandma was a Severns and her mother was Emma Louise - my mother was Emma Lucille.  Emma Louise's parents came to this country her obituary said when she was a young girl.  Her parents were the Brehms from Germany.  She is pictured at the bottom right.

All of this walk down memory lane - caused me to get out the albums and look up Verner and Ida and all the Brians and Severns I could find pictures of.  What a delightful stroll walking through the past.

This made me wonder:  What will my grands quote from me?