From Mother with love - updated with more pictures!

(click on pictures to enlarge)

This year for Christmas my mom made me, my sister, and my sister-in-law each our own quilt wall hanging. In addition to the quilt, we each got a shelf on which to hang our new quilt.

She did such a good job matching not only our personalities but also our houses when she picked our individual designs. She even included the history behind each of our quilts.

(Be sure to click on these to see the hand quilting)

My quilt is a sampler quilt which she hand quilted. I opted to hang it in the kitchen, and I use the shelf to hold some of my favorite things.

The other two quilts are just as beautiful as mine.

(Definitely click on this picture to see the detail of the embroidery)

My sister's quilt has embroidered flowers on white squares with a light green fabric in between. The flowers were patterns printed weekly in the newspaper back in the 1920's. I could be wrong about the date - I didn't get to read her history. But what is really neat is that my great grandmother saved these patterns and had made some of them but was missing a few. My mom did some research, found the missing patterns, and embroidered them all. How cool is that!



My sister-in-law's quilt is more similar to mine but with one design. Hers is the bear's paw pattern. One story is that it was part of the Underground Railroad. The bear paw quilt signaled escaping slaves that they needed to follow the track, perhaps to find water or shelter. Mother made this quilt in deep, rich, dark colors which will go perfectly with Bree's house. Her quilt was Megan's favorite because she loved the colors.

My mom is amazing and talented. I am convinced she can do anything - seriously, I mean anything.

A few Christmas's ago my mom made my sister and I lap quilts from material she had saved through the years. This wasn't just any material though, this was material from clothes she had made us growing up.

I love to sit and look at the fabrics in this quilt. I can remember wearing practically every fabric! Seriously, I wore my clothes and then my sister's hand-me-downs!

This corduroy is from
my FAVORITE pair of overalls Mother made me!

The top right fabric and the bottom middle fabric
were from flannel nightgowns Mother
made my sister and me.

My mom was pretty frugal with patterns too. When she got a new pattern she would usually make me two or three versions and my sister two or three versions. Which meant I ultimately wore six versions of the same pattern.

That was fine if you like the style - but that wasn't always the case. What was there to like about the "dog ear" collar phase from the early 70's. I have a school picture in which the collar on my dress is so long it extends past the bottom of the picture!

We were very well-dressed girls in the 70's though, thanks to Mother's sewing. We always had ponchos, handkerchief sleeve shirts, dresses with empire waists, stretch-in-sew short sets, and matching Sunday dresses!

But I digress, I was talking about quilts.

My mom also made me the quilt on our bed, and she made the quilt on Megan's bed. She is working her way through the granddaughters - making them each a quilt. She is on number three out of seven.

Considering my brother and his wife just added two girls in less than three years, she should have opted to make the boys quilts.

There are only three of them!