OK, this is my first attempt at posting photos, so please bear with me if they don't come out in the right order. There is a primarily blue quilt, a primarily green one, and a close up of a quilt block from the green quilt.
First of all, it would not surprise me if the fabrics came from old clothing of family members and other people close to her. Who knows? Something of mine could be in there too. I don't know. She didn't have a lot of money, and lived on a small pension and social security, so I'm sure she used what she could get. I doubt she could afford new fabrics. My Great Grandmother was very dear to me, and I remember her well. She was 93, and still quilting furiously, when she was killed while walking into town -- from her third floor, walk-up apartment -- to have coffee with 'the girls'. She was hit by a car, and the fellow driving the car was later convicted of driving under the influence (for the umpteenth time) and vehicular manslaughter, and he went to prison I'm happy to say. Great Grandma never woke up from the anesthesia. I was devastated. She was in such great health, who knows how many more years I could have had her in my life, and I loved her so. But that's water under the bridge. These quilt tops came to light just a month ago when I was home, and Dad opened a box he'd received when she died, and he hadn't had the heart to open it prior to then. In it were a lot of her finished work, plus these quilt tops and her quilting frame, which I now have.
Back to the quilts. When you look at them, they have an almost "cathedral" quality to them, with the patterns outlined by the shading. That would be great if they all looked the same, but they don't. (I didn't put the 3rd quilt top up there, because the blocks are so small, it's harder to appreciate the shading.)
If you look at the individual quilt piece, you'll see what I'm dealing with. In that one block, it doesn't look square, but it is. What's throwing your eye off is the fact that the seam allowance is turned part way one way, and part another way along the top and side. It's sewed in that way. It would be a bear to try to undo and flip one way or the other, because that part is machine stitched and the stitches are so teeny tiny, I'd fear harming the quilt to seam rip them out, especially on that fragile fabric. The seams turned down on the dotted squares appear to distort that square. And the funny looking blue squares are actually two tiny pieces sewn together to make a small square. There are places where she meticulously machine sewed together 2 and 3 tiny bits of fabric to make a small square, and those are even stranger looking with seams going every which way. The fact that she pulled together such a beautiful design with such scraps is a testament to her quilting ability.
So, what do you think now?