County Line Quilts: Aunt Joyce’s Heirloom

Halfway Done

Aunt Joyce asked me to complete this heirloom quilt top. The blocks were embroidered by Uncle Don’s Aunt Delia. Aunt Joyce sewed the blocks together with a bright pink sashing. She did quite a job engineering the design to fit the bed. The sashing is different widths to make the blocks fit the bed perfectly and the bottom corners are cut off so they won’t drag on the floor when the quilt is used on the bed. Aunt Joyce wanted polyester batting so that the quilt would be puffy and imperfections in the sashing will show less. I hope she allowed for the puff when she engineered the sashing. Width and length is lost to cover the height of the puff. Knowing Aunt Joyce, she probably figured on that “shrinkage”. This top was difficult to quilt because there was a lot of stopping and starting. After a couple hours of quilting I was exhausted. So it took longer to quilt than a lot of my recent quilts.

Size: 103 1/2" x 94 3/4" before quilting. 100” x 90” after quilting. Queen bed size.
Quilting: Quilted feathers in the wider sashing and leaves in the narrow sashing. Quilted around the embroidery and followed the printed blue dots in the blocks. Quilting was not continuous so there are lots of thread ends to bury, i.e. the quilt is very “hairy”. Used off-white 100% polyester thread (Omni from Superior Threads-named "Pearl White"). 15 bobbins. Quilting by Patty.
Backing: Plain white wide backing From a fabric.com sale. Aunt Joyce sent a backing, but I was afraid the weave would allow the polyester batting to “beard”, so I used my wide white backing that is a tighter weave.
Batting: 100% polyester, Hobbs “Poly-Down”, Premium Polyester.
Embroidery by Aunt Delia, sashing by Aunt Joyce
Pinned into frame July 25, 2018. Quilting on long arm quilter July 25-August 8, 2018. (Patty).
Binding by Patty. Used a piece of plain, dark rose from a Quilt in a Day sale. Binding was made on the bias, per Aunt Joyce’s request to Mother; also bias will look better with the angled off corners. Binding turn down done by hand.
QC by Mother