Nans Quilt

Nan’s Quilt

This quilt has been about 3 years in the making, I decided early on that I wanted it to be for my Nan who was delighted that I was sewing and quilting, I knew that she would appreciate the time and effort of a handmade gift.

Nan's Quilt

I’d worked on it in bits and pieces up until the end of 2015 when I learned my Nan’s health was deteriorating, she was 93 and still living in her own home up until then. I took the finished top, got it basted and started quilting it so that I could get it to her to cheer her up.

She was going to need to move into a nursing home for the extra level of care and also moving down closer to family (yet far from her home) and so I wanted her to have something to make her room feel like hers.

Nans Quilt

I kept working away when I could, another family emergency kept me out of my sewing room for weeks, but eventually I got the machine quilting finished, and I had to update the year on the label I’d already prepared. She was having a hard time settling in, when I went to visit I would take other quilts and sewn pouches to show her and she was so happy that ‘young people’ were still making things.

Nan's Quilt - Binding

I decided to put the binding on first before hand quilting, then Nan needed to go to hospital. She showed some improvement and returned to the nursing home, I started working on the binding, when I went to see her I told her I had something special on the way for her.  Shortly after her health went rapidly downhill again, before I could finish handstitching the binding I went to visit my Nan for what would be the final time.

When Nan passed away I put the quilt aside for a while, I needed a break from it, I felt terrible that it was still here, not finished.

Nan's Quilt - Detail

It had started as a couple charm packs of Moda’s Domestic Bliss by Liz Scott and a couple solid packs in Moda Bella Solids in Snow which were turned into piles of Half Square Triangles, but I quickly realised I didn’t have enough for a decent size quilt so I had to hunt around and eventually found 2 more charm packs of each for more HSTs. The backing print is by Joel Dewberry that matched the colours and style in Domestic Bliss perfectly. The leftovers from this quilt went in to making Heidi’s Quilt.

The layout was designed with the quilting in mind. I wanted the large diamond shapes and then worked out by offsetting them I’d have nice channels zig-zagging all the way down the quilt for long straight quilting lines following the seams. Inside the diamonds I used Angela Walters’ dot-to-dot technique from her Craftsy class to create more diamonds. All of the machine quilting used Aurifil 50w thread in 2110 Light Lemon. The print fabrics needed a little quilting so I decided to add hand stitches in Perle 8 thread in the middle of each triangle.

Nan's Quilt

Towards the end of 2016 I picked it back up again, my Mum had a tough year and I thought maybe the quilt would bring her some comfort, I had wanted her to have it after Nan anyway.

I didn’t stuff around this time, I worked on the hand quilting over a month or so to have it ready for Christmas, I nearly got there, but with only a row to go I gave the quilt to Mum anyway and finished off the last bit of quilting the week after Christmas.

The label reads:

Handmade with all the
love in the world
For Nanna
By Jessica
2016

Nan's Quilt - Back and Label