Alice's Quilt

Back early on in my quilting, soon after mom taught me and soon after my Papa Wally went to Heaven, I saw a post on Facebook. A lady needed a quilt finished and was looking for someone to do it. Since hospice was involved and after the recent passing of Papa Wally and the great help hospice was to him and my mom, I was desperate to help this woman. The post came from a local guild that I once belonged to and continued to get their messages. I contacted them and said I would be honored to be able to finish this quilt. Sight unseen...Mom and I went to meet with Alice. 

She was a very nice lady and was on hospice. Her eyesight was diminished to "legally blind" status. Before her husband died, he had long stays in the hospital. As a quilter, she needed a project and chose this king-sized sampler quilt. She hand stitched all the parts. The backing wasn't anything fancy...just plain muslin. She told us stories, and we were glad to listen. Her heart's desire before she died was to get this quilt finished. She wanted to leave it to her granddaughter. At the end of our visit, she brought out a black plastic trash bag and handed it to us.

I peeked inside and saw all the pieces and couldn't wait to get home to get started. When Mom and I left, I dropped Mom off at home and I went straight to my basement sewing room. I reached in the bag to start pulling out the pieces and grabbed pins! Everything was pinned, not necessarily in the right places. I dumped the bag out on the table and began to sort the pieces and parts. I had some rows that were somewhat put together and some chunks of batting and a stack of blocks. I also found a template for the sashing and some extra material. It looked like it was all there. Upon further investigation I realized ever stitch was hand stitched. She told me that but seeing it all so nicely done I knew there was no way I could do the same for her. That was way above my skill level. I would just use my machine and see what I could do. All of the pieces were already connected as a quilt as you go technique. A technique I hadn't learned yet so i wasn't sure how to put this together. The pieces needed trimmed and really, it was a mess for me and mom trying to figure out this quilt puzzle. I laid out the pieces and got a plan and we jumped in. Mom hand stitched some parts as did I especially on the back because there was no way to machine stitch it. Below you will see the process we went through and finally took it to her. We prayed over the quilt and when we took it to Alice we wrapped her in it and got a picture (shown below).