My “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” Quilt

My first quilting work has not been finished yet. I always liked challenges, so what else could I have started after reading my first quilt book, than a huge “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” king-size quilt?

We were on a vacation at the beautiful Lake Tisza in 1998 with some friends and a bunch of kids. We all had a great time. I started to make and sew together the first hexagons in those delightful summer evenings. The kids liked them so much, that they joined me in the work (the boys too, including my son). I have kept these patches, and – even though I am quite the perfectionist, and kids’ stitches were far from uniform, rather the opposite – but I am sure that those patches will be part of the final quilt. I hope it will be finished some day so I can show it to everyone.

My “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” king-size quilt’s design was constantly changing, as time went by. The biggest disaster for my family was in the first week of our one year spent in Naples (Italy), when our house got robbed. Which had quite the effect on my quilt, since a huge (HUGE) suitcase full of beautiful American quilt fabrics, which I collected in the USA (and made a great effort to bring them home with us, casting out everything else to fit in our suitcases) taken by bad guys.

To tell you the truth for some time I thought I would never be able to look at fabrics again, since they stole not only my fabrics, but the joy of working with them as well. And then my sweet husband told me that I shouldn’t grieve about it, he would buy me new fabrics, even better looking ones, than before.

And soon after in Naples I have started a new project as a therapy: I created 4 wall hangings (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) from the small pieces of sample fabrics remained after the robbery (I have kept the samples in a different box) and from some blocks of the “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” quilt.

I am still looking for the matching fabric to create the border for Spring, but the rest of them are complete.

My blog

I think it is quite an undertaking to start and then operate a good blog. After you open it there is the first impression, then a good blog should be pretty and be well arranged, and finally it comes the main point: it should be filled up with content which is important for me and what is more interesting and could be useful for others.

I make quilts and this is my work and my hobby as well. So I will write mainly about quilts in my blog. I work at home so naturally my posts will inevitably contain materials of our family, our building the house, cooking and every similar “delicacies”. Just as it should be.

I would like to record memories concerning some special fabrics – before they are lost forever. Maybe you agree with me that quilting is this kind of interesting thing. The movie “How to Make an American Quilt” is full of little episodes in which the quilters remember important events of their life, or just a moment, or a smile in the sunshine based on small pieces of fabrics. I found this really memorable photo from it.

I also have many fabrics that remind me of great memories such as a delightful city, a chance meeting or laughing together with a lovely assistant in a nice fabric shop.

I am Hungarian, so English is not my mother tongue. I am trying very hard to write in a decent way in English, with the least possible mistakes. I can not achieve that constantly though, so please be patient. I hope you will be able to understand what I am trying to say.