I've seen them used to make flower basket blocks and also butterfly blocks. Make a beautiful quilt. I used my mother-in-laws to make a sort of crazy quilt hanging.

The link to "victorianaquiltdesigns" is wonderful - best tutorial I have seen on using handkerchiefs for a butterfly quilt. Thank you.

You can check out this posting:

http://www.quiltingboard.com/tutoria...n-t199207.html

About 20 years ago, before I started quilting, I received my grandmother's hankies--all very sheer. So I fused them onto a pale yellow King size sheet to use as a summer weight spread--which gets taken off each night. Not as fancy as other quilts I've seen made with them, but I like the results cause you can see the whole hankie and they are stablized.

Handkerchief quilt
 

My mother and my aunt made this one for their sister. They added pelion to the backs and alternated with solid blocks.

Here are 2 that I made from my grandmothers hankies and tea towels. I used a fusible interfacing on the hankies and quilted as normalhttp://www.quiltingboard.com/attachm...15483878_n.jpghttp://www.quiltingboard.com/attachm...64291942_n.jpg

love this idea
http://www.victorianaquiltdesigns.co...ckTutorial.htm

Just saw your post. I posted the basket quilt recently. I did not reinforce the hankies in any way. I also did minimal quilting on them because of their fragile nature. I first did two rows of reinforcement stitching one half inch apart from corner to corner (like making a half square triangle block from a square). I then pressed them along the stitching lines to form the "hem". (2nd line was harder to do). Then I cut between the stitching which gave me 2 halfs with 1/4 inch already turned under along the bias edge. I machine appliqued the hankie half onto the block using a narrow zig zag stitch. Only other stitching on them was minimal quilting when I quilted it. I made them (I also made two butterfly quilts earlier and used same method) as keepsakes and assume they won't be laundered much. Hope this helps. If anyone has other questions you can PM me.

Hi Evie! The link above is my quilt. I have more directions for this quilt if you are interested. For instance, I do sew my hankies to a light ivory/off white block. This keeps all blocks the same size. On the more used/delicate hankies, I ironed them to the block with "French Fuse", which is a light-weight fusible. I had a long-arm quilter quilt this with an all-over pattern and it turned out beautiful. This is the 2nd hanky quilt that I have made. For the one above, my daughter couldn't choose which hankies she wanted so we used them all. Some I purchased. The other quilt was for a twin bed and I followed the Moda directions. (My daughter-in-law made one and I made one to match for these twin beds.)

Please let me know, if I may be of further help to you. Yolanda

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Google handkerchief butterfly quilts, there are several methods, all beautiful, my sister is making one for her sister-in-law. I don't think they are lined.