37 Yr Old Cross stitch blocks become quilts.

A neighbor of mine brought over some cross stitch blocks her mother had done when expecting her.  She kept them all these years in the hopes one day she would get around to completing them into a blanket.  She asked if I could do something with them.  

At first I was a little hesitant. The cotton fabric was old a frail.  She assured me that whatever I did would be better than them sitting in the bag in the closet. 

There were kittens, puppies and circus animals as well as her name.  Decided to split the animals and do one with the puppies and kittens and one with the circus animals. I really wanted to retain the charm of the era they were created in. First things first. Had to stabilize the integrity of the fabric. The cotton had discolored and had a few spots. Decided on the size I wanted to work with and  began there!

Decided on the pinwheel design. That was popular back then. Found a floral fabric with x stitched that complemented the cross stitch. Loving the concept. Now the name!

Coming together. 

One done!  Now the next.  My neighbor really seemed to be all about the idea of lots of color. For this one I decided to make it super colorful. 

This is more to my liking. These are my go to happy colors.  But something was missing. Decided to use rainbow verigated thread to do the quilting. 

Much better!  

And we are done!  She was super excited. Not sure why I didn't think to take pics when she picked them up.  I am so thrilled she allowed me to be parthttp://shelleyvance.blogspot.com/?m=1 of that.