An old and new quilt

My mother-in-law started a quilt a very long time ago.  (Like over 30 years ago.)  It was the kind that you quilt the back to the top square by square, by hand, and then assemble it all when you are done. 

She got 5 squares done, and then life got in the way.  I know how that is.  And then she didn't feel like working on it any more.  So about a year ago she gave me the box with the squares that were already complete, the squares that were partly complete, and all of the material she had purchased to make this quilt.  She said that I could finish it, or throw it, or give it away. 

I put it in my closet thinking I might finish it for her someday.  About 6 months ago I took it out, looked at it for a few days, decided that there was too much work still left on it, and put it back in the closet again.

After Christmas I got it out again to decide what I actually wanted to do with it.  The squares are each about 2 feet wide.  The color scheme is grass green and brown (not my favorites by any means).  I put the 5 'done' squares on the floor in one of the spare bedrooms, and started to think about how I could finish it with the least amount of effort, but still have a decent product when I was done.

I figured out how to do 4 more squares so that I would have sort of a lap quilt.  But before I did, I made sure that my MIL actually wanted the quilt.  I didn't want to keep it, nor did I want to throw it, but I didn't want to spend time on it if she didn't really want it back.   So I showed her my idea, and told her that if I was going to finish it, it would be machine quilted since there was no way that I was going to hand quilt the 4 blocks that I would have to do.  She said she was fine with that.

I had some extra small squares, so first I made a table runner.  It turned out pretty cute.  the gingham squares look red-ish in this picture, but are actually brown.

 I used floss and tied buttons into all of the corners of the quilt squared to keep the batting from shifting.  I have jillions of odds and ends buttons, so I just sort or randomly looked for browns and greens and threw in a few white ones.

Then I tackled the quilt.  First I quilted the 4 additional squares that I needed.  I'm not sure how people attach the squares together normally.  I've always wondered that about these individual squares.  Since they are already quilted you can't just sew them together - somehow you have to keep top and bottom separate - so I had to do a little experimenting.  I made a couple of fake little squares to figure out how to put them together.  (I suppose I could have found a youtube video - but I didn't think of that.)

I finally came up with a way to sew a strip to both sides of each square, then just sew the top together on the other side.  (Probably not a great explanation, but suffice it to say that I came up with a plan.)

Here is the front of the quilt.  You can't quite see the whole thing because it was in a small bedroom and I had to stand outside the door to try to get a picture, but you get the idea.  I had the green and yellow blocks done to begin with, and the middle of the brown blocks was pieced, so I finished the brown blocks and assembled it.

  Here's a picture of the blocks from the back.  The brown backs belong to the green and yellow fronts.  You can see that I just simply sewed around the pieced blocks for the ones that I added.  (the green blocks on the back)

 

It's not perfect, but it's not thrown away either - and it's one more project that I can check off.  Hopefully she'll get some use out of it as a lap throw when she's watching television or something.