Quilting With Ghosts

A while ago I read a blog that mentioned how someone felt she was "cooking with ghosts" when she used different pans, bowls, and utensils that had belonged to various relatives and how using these things brought up feelings and memories of the past. I felt that way last week when I was working on a wall hanging made with a bunch of 1930's hexagons that I found in some of my mother's stuff when she died two years ago.

My grandmother had given her these hexagons way back in the 1970s, hexagons that had been made by one of my grandmother's aunt in the 1930s and were probably meant for a grandmother's flower garden quilt:

These are all hand sewn, and aren't in very good shape anymore. I don't think my mother really knew what to do with them, so they sat around in a bag for about 35 years. I sorted them and thought I might want to make some different little wall hangings and pillows.

First, I started with some in the brown/yellow/green color family. I zig-zagged the hexagons around the edges (for stability) and blocked some together.

Then some free motion quilting:

Here it is all finished: