Opus 2, Memory

My pioneer instincts to save resulted in several boxes of fabric scraps over the years. I always intended to make quilts, like my Grandmother Pearl. In her later years she pieced quilts for each of her children and grandchildren. Most of these quilts were nine-patch blocks, made from scraps. Grandma's sight was failing so her daughters cut the scraps into squares for hand-piecing. With this example before me, I thought all quilts were made from small squares of scraps, so at one time I took all my fabric scraps and cut them into squares, three or four or five inches, depending on how big the scraps were.

During one of our moves, I threw away several boxes of scraps, but I saved the squares I had already cut. Then, in 2004 when I started making quilts, the pre-cut squares became the basis for the first quilt I made. By then I learned that people were using rotary cutters and strip-piecing. Oh, well. I would still make my first quilt the old-fashioned way.


"Memory" is made out of four-inch squares sewed into nine-patch formations. One day on my favorite tv quilting show, I got a great idea to use novelty prints for the centers of my blocks. Remembering the fun Memory game our children loved, I cut pairs of novelty prints. I also found some blue fabric that looked like the back of the Memory cards and used that for the sashing between blocks and the back of the quilt. The outer border is made from some of my precut five inch squares, joined together in a row and then trimmed.

Some of the blocks were hand pieced, like my Grandma's. But I pieced most of them on the machine. When finished, the quilt top was about 73 by 83 inches. Grandma's quilts were tied. Later I learned that technically, a tied quilt is a "comforter" and not a quilt. To be a real quilt, the layers have to be sewn together, either by hand or by machine. But I didn't know this when I started, so my first quilt, "Memory" is tied together with a tuft of blue yarn in the center of each of the squares except the special centers.

The grandchildren have fun finding the matching pairs: two apples, two Eeyores, two elephants.