Family Treasures

Several years ago, my mother visited my grandmother who lived in Racine, WI. She brought home a beautiful machine appliqued, tied basket quilt. She gave it to me. As we were looking at it, she turned it over and said, "Look at all the beautiful hand quilting on the back!" Lights started flashing, bells started ringing and I said, "WAIT!!! There's no hand quilting on the front, it's tied! I think we have two quilts here!" Sure enough, I clipped the threads around the back edge of the quilt and we found this buttonhole appliqued beauty underneath! My mother looked at it and remembered the quilt from her childhood...her grandmother made it. Apparently, my good, German grandmother made a second quilt when the first one got worn and put it right over top of the first quilt! No need to waste that quilt...it was perfectly good! I'm so glad she did because although they are worn, they are wonderful! In the second basket quilt picture, you can see that she added a last row of baskets upside down and off centered. This part was folded over and stitched down on the back of the quilt...maybe to be folded down when the bed was made and the baskets would be right side up? I plan to fix what I can on the baskets and quilt it with Baptist Fans on my machine. The other quilt is in very delicate condition and I have it hanging on a quilt rack. I feel so blessed by these treasures...and now I have quilts from 5 generations of quilters in my family...from my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, myself and my daughter. On another note...I finished unquilting the quilt and it is back on the machine to be quilted again. It's going much better this time! Thanks for all of your encouragement...I certainly needed it!
And now I'll post this again...blogger hasn't let me do anything since yesterday!