Mary F.'s husband Jeff inherited a hand-quilted top from his maternal grandmother, Edna Reece Stiles (1892-1967, b. Davenport, Iowa, mother of 12).
Made in the Half-Square Triangle pattern, one half of each square is blue, mostly a dark blue, with the other half being a contrasting light, bright or dark color.
The top is 77" x 84", made of what could be old dresses and shirts, maybe from the 1910s - 1920s. The top had been used, because many of the edges were really stretched out and the raw edges had a lot of ravelling, to the point where a couple of the fabrics had ravelled away from the hand stitched seam and required an invisible fused patch on the back. In a previous attempt to repair the top, someone machine sewed over a few of the hand-pieced seams.
The stretched bias edges meant that the top was not flat, so I hand-sewed "darts" along the edges, trying to flatten and straighten the top. I used vintage pink and blue cotton fabrics from the 1990's for the front border and the pieced back, and incorporated some large half-square triangle blocks to recapitulate the pattern on the top.
Quilted in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal straight lines to secure the stretched bias fabrics.
Intended as a raffle quilt for the 2015 ADC Alzheimer's rummage sale.
