Our mother passed away in November 2011. Somehow, all of her belongings ended up in numerous boxes in my house. Most of the boxes were stuffed with her clothing. Mom had a unique style (as we all should). There was no mistaking the patterns and colours she favoured.
I have mentioned before, space in the Kentucky house is minimal. I had to decide what to do with 9 boxes of clothing that didn’t suit me, or any other female in the family. I couldn’t bring myself to give them away, or *gasp* throw them away.
Christmas was coming. I decided to make quilts for my sister Irene, and my daughter.
Now understand, I am no quilter. I am not even a sewer. Time was limited. It didn’t deter me.
I started by cutting the seams out of all of her slacks and tops. As I watched television at night, or chatted with a visitor over coffee, I took a pair of good scissors and cut away. I cut off all of the seams and cut away all hems. Any and all trim was removed.
LAY OUT CLOTHING
TURN IT INSIDE OUT
CUT OFF HEM
(HEM REMOVED)
CUT OFF COLLAR
CUT OFF CUFFS
CUT OFF SLEEVES
REMOVE SEAM ON SLEEVE, IF NECESSARY
CUT SIDE SEAMS ON SHIRT BODY, IF NECESSARY
Next, i created a paper square to be used as a template. I removed the center of the template so I could position it on decorative areas of the clothing and see what the result will be.
CREATE PAPER TEMPLATE AND DRAW SQUARES ON CLOTH
Again, television and visitor time gave me the perfect opportunity to draw squares on the now-flat cloth. Using a sharpie on the lighter clothing posed no problem, but darker colours seemed to perplex me for a minute. A pink crayon came to my rescue! Once all of the squares were drawn, I got my scissors again.
The end result was piles of cloth squares that i sorted into colour groups.
Spread on the Living Room floor, I was able to arrange them into a sort of cohesive pattern. Then it was just a matter of stitching the blocks together into rows; then the rows together.
PIN SQUARES TOGETHER into a row (front sides facing each other).
I pinned a piece of paper with the row number on it just to keep track.
SEW EACH OF THE PINNED SQUARES.
When all rows are complete, pin the rows together (right sides facing). This is where the row number comes in handy.
The entire quilt was sewn directly onto one of Mom’s favourite blankets. I then used coloured thread in the corner of each square to ‘tie’ them together.
They won’t win any blue ribbons, but I think they won over my sister’s and daughter’s hearts!
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