#IGQuiltFest2021 ~ Day 9 ~ Heirlooms

 My Grand-Darling's Favorite Quilt

#IGQuiltFest2021 ~ Day 9 ~ Heirlooms

This is the closest I can come to a family "Heirloom" quilt.

Firstly, I sew humble quilts that are meant to be loved and used and used up.

Secondly, I am a self taught quilter and never saw my mother sew.

I never saw a quilt made by a grandmother or great grandmother, so I do not know if they ever existed.  I remember being surprised at about 11 years old to find that the "telephone table" in the dining room in my mother's house when the top was folded open revealed a Singer sewing machine hidden inside. I taught myself to thread it and use it. I was amazed by this wonderful machine and started sewing my own clothes. In high school, my favorite "after-school downtown hangout" was a fabric store. I went there everyday just to look at all the beautiful colors and fabrics. I hoarded and saved my pennies and once in awhile I got to bring home a fabric treasure. 

Fast forwarding, one day when I was grown and married and getting ready to have our first child, I decided to make quilt and went to the nearest big box fabric store and bought flannel and lace and ribbon and batting.

Then I made baby quilt for my first baby without a clue as to what I was doing and then a second quilt for my second baby and they loved them to pieces. 

This was a quilt I made with scraps back in the day when I was teaching myself to quilt. It had no design.  I made it up as a went along based on the size of the scraps. At then time, I did not even know that I had a "walking foot" to try to quilt it, so I just used my regular foot and it was puckered and the "quilting lines" were not straight. Truth be told, the seams were not either.  I gave it to my daughter to take to camp, on drum corps buses and she took it off with her as she made her own life, married and moved far away. 

It lived on the sofa and was a favorite nesting place for my grand-pup.

One night when she was about three, my grand-darling took it off the sofa and off to bed with her and it became "Everly's Quilt. "

When I visited my daughter and her family in our last pre-Covid trip,

this was the state of the heirloom quilt.

The quilt was had big rips and a ragged binding for the many washings.

While my grand-darling was at pre-school I fixed her quilt as best I could. Here you see my grand-pup keeping me company on a quilt I made for my daughter that she put on the guest bed.

I was not finished the binding repair when she came in smiled at me and claimed her quilt to take it off for her afternoon rest on the sofa. I barely had to me to snip the thread so she did not take the needle, too. 

I finished it up when she went out to play

 and she happily took it off to bed that night. 

The fabrics are wearing out again and this is a hole that opened up this year.

Efforts to find a new and better quilt for Everly have not worked.

She wants this quilt.

So my daughter found a piece of scrap fabric and added more batting

 and hoped Everly would accept the changes.

Here she is studying the fix and is puzzle how the little mermaid fabric

came to be in her quilt.

Happily, she is able to snuggle in her quilt again,

 until the next time it needs a fix.

So the scrap quilt lives on 

and is loved by three generations.

If this is not a family heirloom quilt, 

I don't know what is. 

<3 <3 <3