This is a very touching story. I, too, helped my MIL with a quilt project. She made a quilt for her bed when she retired teaching. She did a candlewicked embroidery design on each block and put them together and added 2 inch wide lace between the block. Then, she had it hand quilted. She put it on her bed. All the family was there for a family dinner and everybody kept asking her "where is mine?" or "do I get one, too?" so she started at the top of the list of kids ( she had 8) and made the next quilt. After that, she asked me to help so I sewed quilt tops together and used the rotary cutter to cut blocks. I serged the edges so they didn't ravel when she embroideried on them. I sewed lace on one top and hand quilted another. Thru the years that we worked together, we chatted about lots of things, but mostly she told me stories of her life and how she grew up during the depresion. She was 89 when we came to the last quilt, the one for my husband since he was the youngest. She was going in to the nursing home then, because due to health reasons, she could not stay alone any more. She asked me about my quilting and I told her about a quilt that I was working on. I asked about hers and she started to cry. She said she was not going to get the last one finished before she was gone. I asked her if she would like me to finish it for her. The tears rolled down her cheaks and she asked, "Would you?" I said yes I would. She told my husband where she kept all the blocks and the pattern books and the thread she was using for embroidery. We took them home that night. Her health took a turn for the worse and we spent a lot of time with her before she passed away. The quilt could wait. About 6 months after her death, I got out the blocks. Our quilt was to be 42 blocks, 6 wide and 7 long to fit our bed. She had embroideried 27 blocks and the rest were plain. There was one block missing but I found a piece of fabric large enough to cut the last block in the sewing supplies she had given me to finish the quilt that night so long ago. I put it away again. Later, when my DH's family was going thru the house and disposing of a life time of memories, we found the last partially finished block in her sewing basket. I sewed the blocks together but I did not do any more embroidery on the unfinished blocks. I hand quilted in a design in the plain blocks and quilted the embroideried blocks. That way the only embroidery in the quilt is hers. She embroideried the date she started each quilt on the first block and the date she finished on the last. I added the partially finished block and quilted a wreath around the stitching she had done and in the wreath, I quilted the date I finished the quilt. It took me 14 months of stitching to finish it as I was working full time and I could only work in the evenings. It was so pretty when I got it done. My DH is very proud of it and treasures it. I named the quilt "A Promice Kept" because she promised her kids they would each get a quilt and I promised her that I would finish it. I wrote the story of the quilt on the computer and printed it on Printed Treasures. Then I stitched it on the back. The story of this quilt needed to be told and needed to stay with the quilt.
I understand why you worked so hard on these quilts for your MIL and what treasures they will be for those recieving them. What a wonderful way for families to share their love and rememberance of those who have passed. Thank you for doing this and for sharing your story with us.