How Grandma makes quilts

My mother-in-law is getting a lot more quilts finished than I am.  She probably averages 3 hours a day.  I'm happy to get an hour a day for any of the fiber arts, and it's usually knitting these days since my quilting area is still trashed.  But since I help her lay them out and pin them, I can take pictures and put them on my blog. 

She has an interesting approach to quilting: she backs her quilt tops with pre-quilted fabric, and once the top and quilted backing are pinned, she ties them at intervals with embroidery floss or perle cotton.  The resulting quilts are cheerful and utilitarian and she donates most of them to charity.  The top one is made from a bunch of her Christmas fabrics.

The second one she says took her over 20 years, mainly to find the different flower patterns she used.  You can just see the wrong side of the pre-quilted fabric sticking out under the top.

As for me, I'm still stuck on sleeve island on two sweaters.  On Cityscape I'm more than halfway up the sleeves -- the good news is that my arms are short, so I only have to make it to 18 inches, instead of 19.  Lots of stockinette stitch still to go, but the good part is getting closer.  On Green Mountain Gardens, I've been taking a hiatus because it's too complex to just grab and go when I go to knit night, and lately I haven't been up for much complexity while watching TV either.  I have almost finished spinning up the Shetland wool I blogged about last week.