Labor of Love

(Edited 2/2: This is the story of a quilt that has been in the making for probably 25 15-20 years. I don't know when my mother started it, but I'm certain it was after 1993 1996. [Their youngest child, whose birth date is embroidered on the quilt top was born in 1996. Took me a few days to realize she couldn't possibly have started before he was even born.])

As was her way, she was meticulous in her planning.

The photocopy on the left is from an QNM dated 1993. The magazine in the middle is dated 1991.

This quilt is to commemorate my brother's marriage in 1992. Over the years when I'd visit I'd ask about its progress and she'd pull it out so we could discuss next steps or sticking points or whatever it was that was slowing her forward motion. Four or five years ago we determined it was the color of the embroidery floss she was unhappy about, so a trip the JoAnn's Fabrics straightened out that little road bump and she was happily working on it again.

These days, not so much. My mother has Alzheimer's, and it's progressing rapidly. I'd noticed a marked loss of short-term memory when I stayed with them three years ago. These days I live with them two months at a time (with a month off while my brother lives with them), but she doesn't really know exactly who I am. On her best days, she's introduced me as her sister. On other days, I might be her mother or the nice lady who owns the house they're 'temporarily staying in'.

The quilt-to-be was again uncovered recently (last year?) and she found yet more things to be unhappy with. When the banquet table was cleared of the latest jigsaw puzzle in September and we spread the quilt pieces out, she was appalled at the unevenness of the borders, so another element was removed in an effort to correct that with the idea of reconnecting things straighter.

8/2020: Lower right corner--that's part of the quilt top, folded and languishing untouched.

After a week or so, another jigsaw was unboxed and the quilt top was folded up and forgotten. When my brother arrived at the beginning of January to take his turn again, she didn't even know what he was referring to when he asked about it.

It was time to get it to a point where she could start working on it again! I'm loathe to even admit this, but I didn't tell her. I simply packed everything I could find that related to this project, and brought it home with me. (I did tell my brother, so he wouldn't bring it up again and possibly prompt her to start looking for it.) At the rate she was going, it was on the way to being perfected into oblivion.

This is the state in which it was left. Yesterday morning I draped it over our square table simply to get a picture of where everyone's names were to go, without thought of staging for a blog post. It was my goal to spend the day assessing and working on this. I have a week to get it reassembled, and other than taxes, no other projects on my horizon.

Regular or consistent seam allowances are for sissies, apparently.

The darkest line is the one to follow? Or none of them? And I sure wish I had noticed right away that the green border was cut on the bias!

The pins holding all this together are as railroad spikes compared to the pins I use in my work.

So, step 1: remove those triangles and get the green border even all the way around. That's what she had been trying to fix when this slipped off her radar. There was quite a bit of snippage along the edges, deep enough that at least 1/4" needed to be trimmed from all four sides.

I ended up centering the pink strip between the 1/2" and 3/4" marking on my 3.5" x 24" ruler and cutting off anything that extended beyond that, so an even 2.75" green border was established all the way around the center.

Step 2: scrub out all the pencil markings in the triangles!

I did one of the lighter-marked triangles first, but didn't establish a "before" so I wasn't sure I made a difference. For the second one, I took pictures.

This was one of the worst seams, marking-wise. I wet the entire length with water just so it would stay flat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I cleaned the right half first. I rubbed an ancient bar of Fels Naptha over the markings, then used a toothbrush to scrub that in (back & forth as well as circular motions). Then I added some diluted laundry detergent and scrubbed that in. Then I added my favorite kitchen cleaner (baking soda mixed into dish soap to make a paste) and scrubbed that in. It may have been overkill, but I was willing to throw everything in my arsenal at those stubborn graphite markings (short of bleach, of course. I didn't want to accidentally bleach the embroidery floss.)

While most of this may have been smearage I was cleaning off, the results showed me it was worth all the elbow grease.

 

Step 3: Iron and starch the scrubbed, rinsed, and damp triangles. Anything remaining of the graphite was bound to be permanent, so ironing those markings wasn't going to make any difference.

At this point I was thinking I'd need to fit the triangles to the newly-established green border, so I started measuring the top edge of each. Two of the triangles were going to be too narrow, due to previous trimmings.

 

In with all the extra fabrics she had set aside from/for this project was some of the white background.

I could cut new "wings" for the two too-narrow triangles, and be on my way again!

 

Except, over the years and from all the handling during the embroidering, the white-on-white fabric used in the triangles had lost most of its "white-on-" and the new wings were too bright, too white.

There was no way I could convince myself this would be unnoticeable, let alone my very picky mother! Close at hand were several scraps of light-weight sheeting and other cottons, so I grabbed a 4" strip of something that looked similar and threw it up on the design wall.

Not perfect, but close enough!

Step 4: Check the squareness of the triangles, trim if necessary.

Oh, it was necessary! As they were each squared, I jotted down the final measurements of all three sides. From that I could determine the final size they'd all have to be trimmed down to so they'd all be the same. It also became necessary to replace the wings of the two triangles I thought were wide enough. The originals had been sewn on so crookedly they completely compromised any attempt at getting a straight top/hypotenuse edge, so if I had to reattach them I might as well replace them with the same fabric used for the first two replacements.

Once all the triangles were nibbled to the same size and their pointy ends squared off, it was obvious the green border needed to be trimmed down further.

This was the perfect point to square up the whole thing. Two opposing sides measured 1/8" longer than the other sides, so since I was going to have to trim everything down, two sides were narrowed by 11/16" and the other two sides by 3/4". That sixteenth inch will never be noticed.

From there it was simply a matter of sewing on all four triangles. As mentioned before, I wish I had noticed the green border had been cut on the bias, because I would've starched it along with the triangles. But, no matter. I handled all the pieces gently with a minimum of stress and stretch, and achieved a perfect square that is mostly flat.

There's a bit of puffiness in the middle, but to correct that would mean a full disassembly of all borders, stripping it back to the very beginning. Not gonna happen. Besides, it'll quilt out.

 

Many of the marked-up seam allowances were trimmed away in the process of squaring and resizing the triangles. The worst one will have just a bit of the gray showing on the back of the fabric, and I don't think any of it will show from the front.

Here's the rest of the project. This:

was once inserted in this:

There was something about that skinny pink border (still partially attached in the photo above this one) that she didn't like. Based on the various lengths of 3/4" fabric she had strewn about, I think she wanted to replace the pink with green, perhaps the same skinny medium/light green showing in this outer piece.

 

The next step will be to carefully iron, starch, and tame all those bias edges, take the inside measurement of this border, compare it to the outside measurement of the middle piece, then insert a border (or two?) that will fill the difference. That'll be today's project, if the day isn't eaten up by filing taxes.

That jigsaw puzzle was eventually finished.