Four Patch Quilt Back Story.....

Since everyone is amazed that this top is hand pieced, I wanted to be sure that you had the entire story.

When I first learned to quilt, my sister in law taught me to hand piece. We started with a simple nine patch and I fell in love with the idea of making a quilt. I didn't know much, but I knew I really wanted to make quilts. Time passed, we had one more child, and several miscarriages. When things settled down after the traumatic two years following the premature birth of child number four, I picked quilting back up. I had just made a few nine patches, but began hand piecing and quilting in earnest.

I started making baby quilts for the young mothers at our church and quickly, my skill grew. I realized within a couple of years that I would never be able to keep up with making all those baby quilts by hand. Hand piecing and hand quilting. So about 3 years ago, or so, I started machine piecing. Even with machine piecing, my increasing responsibilities of caring for my husband caused me to realize that I would not be able to keep up the young women in our church. Those babies came one after another. And I had less and less time to sew.

So, during the time I was hand piecing, I felt badly that I was making all these baby quilts for others and my own children weren't going to have quilts made by their mother. As in the cobbler's children not having any shoes. In 2003, I decided I would make each of my children a graduation quilt.

I got Dear Older Daughter's Quilt top completed and almost finished the quilting by her graduation. Dear Older Son's Quilt was a bit later than that....ok, so it's still not quilted. But the top was completed by graduation.

As Dear Younger Son's graduation time neared, I knew I couldn't machine piece his quilt after making his older siblings hand pieced quilts. Bummer. So, I started on it, but stalled many, many times because hand piecing was just so slow.

Now, Dear Older Daughter has a completed quilt. Dear Older Son and Dear Younger Son have a completed top. I'll start hand quilting Dear Older Son's top first....and then move on to Dear Younger Son's top after that.

Perhaps, I should start now on Dear Younger Daughter's graduation quilt....six years early?? Yeah, maybe I should. LOL

Happy Procrastinating!!!!!