Monday, August 5, 2019

Aunt Sue's Cross Stitch Quilt :: A Finish

This one is going in the mail today back to it's owner so now I can share it with you.



So ... here is the story: My aunt's MIL passed away a couple months ago. She was a quilter. Like most of us, she had several unfinished projects. My aunt, who doesn't sew at all, asked if I would finish a few of them as they were for her girls (my cousins). Those quilts were already to the finished top stage. They only needed quilting, binding and a label. I had my local long arm quilter do the quilting. All I did was bind and label them.

Then she included a bag of 31 of these cross-stitched blocks and asked me to put them together into a quilt. When squared up these blocks finish at about 16.5", so they are pretty big. And as you probably know, there is no easy way to put 31 identical blocks into a quilt. My original plan was to put 30 of them on the front, with the other on the back. However, with sashing and borders that quilt would have been HUGE! Too big to even be quilted by my long arm quilter! So on to plan B. I ended up making two quilts from the blocks. The smaller of the two is shown above using 9 of the blocks. It is 66.5" by 66.5". The other quilt is exactly the same, except it uses 20 of the blocks. It is still pretty big, too big to fit well on my fence for photography. 

The remaining two blocks I'm just returning to my aunt. I was going to border them and have them quilted but they are stained. I decided not to fool with trying to wash unfinished blocks to see if I could get the stains out.

Honestly, when I first saw these blocks I was not inspired. In fact, I made a big *SIGH* and just shook my head. Now that the two quilts with these blocks are finished, I love them! These are not my style at all, but they are so sweet and pretty all the same.


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