My husband’s family is large. Some might say huge, even. How big is it? Well, it’s so big that at Christmas they finally started drawing names out of a hat instead of everyone going broke trying to buy for one another. It makes complete sense, and I love it. Sometimes it can get a little hard when I don’t know someone all that well, but I’m also lucky that they are perfectly content with gift cards. As am I, by the way, and I love that I can pretty much count on a Target or JoAnn’s gift card from the Nashville crew each year.
A few years ago I drew my mother-in-law’s name. Now she doesn’t mind giving gift cards, but I couldn’t remember a single time I’d ever seen her spend one. Then I remembered one thing she and I had in common – a love of quilts. In addition to animals, my mother-in-law likes to collect orphaned quilts. She has them hanging over her banisters and on quilt racks all around her home. Mostly they are older and made by some long-since-deceased relative. I like looking at the hand-quilting on them. It’s mostly the Baptist fan pattern.
When she looked through her own deceased mother-in-law’s cedar chest, she found some vintage 9-patch blocks that she gave over to me. She likes collecting quilts, not making them. I figured I’d do something with them in the distant future, but when I drew her name in the Christmas drawing I brought them out sooner along with some of the other vintage fabric she’d found and passed my way.
It was a relatively east fix. 1. Square up the original 9-patch blocks. 2. Trim the other vintage fabric she’d given me and make sashing. 3. Assemble. 4. Add borders. Voila!
This was also one of the first times I’d tried out a label. It worked well, and I placed it in a lower corner.
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