Originally Posted by Kellie G
My friend just lost her home to a fire in January. Just recently they were going through some boxes from the garage that were not damaged and she found several hankies that her husband's grandmother left. She is not a real creative person and wondered what she could do with them to hand them down to her kids and their wives. They are at least 75 years old (the hankies, not the kids). Any suggestions from you creative people out there?
In the quick 3 years that I've been quilting, I have done 2 projects with OLD hankies. I've attached photos of a baby quilt I made in anticipation of the birth of our 1st grandchild (he's now almost 9 months old). This quilt has hankies on it from the babies ancestors that represent BOTH sides of his family and go back 6 generations from his. I machine initialed each and every piece of hanky that was used with the initials of the lady who own the hanky. In my instance it was a blessing that "pieces" could be utilized - some hankies had some really unusable areas in them. On the back of this quilt I machine embroidered the initials used on the front then alongside of initials I spelled out each person's full name. The names were divided in paragraphs each one of which represented a different generation. There wasn't a dry eye at our daughter's shower. My other hankie quilt used whole hankies that were mine and my mother's (she's be gone 32 years). I have yet to quilt it but it is really pretty. I'll try tp post a photo if I can locate it.