Mendofleur

This unfinished baby quilt actually has two names: “My Ten Year Quilt” and “Hearts and Stars”. I was a little reluctant to share it due to my inability to get it done. My oldest grandson, the future recipient of this quilt, is now ten years old. It has become a bit of a joke between myself and my husband how I manage to still be working on this. Tastes change and after the first year I decided I did not like the plain colored background. I am all for prints now…lots of them, a vast array of them. Another factor that slowed the process was my ambition to do this without a single machine stitch. Of course I also have a zillion other projects going at the same time.

If you look closely you will see the prints better. In the late 70′s I worked in a very nice fabric store that sold primarily European fabrics predominately for clothing. I had access to those enchanting Liberty of London cotton lawn prints. The quality was so nice, they felt like silk, and I started collecting a few. So when I realized my first grandchild was on the way, I decided to design a quilt using them in some way. The quilt pattern came from a book, and I modified it to suit me. I decided hearts would represent my love for this child and stars for his/her success in life. We did not know if it was to be a boy or girl, so I figured I needed to make it non-gender specific.

The girl did not have this embroidered hair initially. I decided she looked pretty plain during the hand quilting process, so I went back and gave all the girls this curly hairdo, lots of bullion stitches seemed the answer.

The boy had this baseball thing going on, so I felt he needed a little flair too, so I gave him a few unruly curls. Mind you, this was all done in between the hand quilting, and I had to be very careful not to stitch into the back.

I am really hopeful that one of these days I can finish this. My daughter recommended I give it to my youngest grandchild, a girl who is still young enough to love it at age 6, but I also have quilted “g’s” all over the quilt for my grandson’s first name. I am thinking now it might make a perfect high school graduation gift, not that he would be proud to take it to college, but I still think someday he might appreciate all the effort his procrastinating grandma put into this gift. If only I could take a three week cross-country road trip, I am convinced I would have it finished as we pulled in the driveway. Well, I simply will never give up!