Iowa Quilt Museum Grandmother's Garden

Kudos to Marianne Fons for establishing the Iowa Quilt Museum!!

It is right on the town square...

In the old J.C.Penney building!!

Winterset, Iowa is also the birthplace of John Wayne.

And they have built a very impressive museum (several blocks away from the town square).

But -- hey -- back to the Iowa Quilt Museum...

It's fun to read the story of each quilt.

This Baltimore Album Quilt was stunning.

This Grandmother's Garden -- with all those hexies...YIKES...

This quilt stopped me in my tracks, because my sister Ronda HAS a quilt top that looks very similar. Even the green border is the same. We believe it was started by our great-grandmother, then completed by our Grandma Dodds. Mom inherited it, but never did anything with it. Now Ronda has it, and the big question has always been HOW DO YOU FINISH THIS SUCKER??

The story of this particular quilt could have been written by my family. It took THREE GENERATIONS of women to finish the damn thing!! (except, of course, we're on the forth generation and still only have a quilt top).

The most recent owners of this quilt HIRED a woman to turn the quilt top into a finished quilt.

The woman to did a knife edge finish...which was something new to me (remember -- I AM NOT A QUILTER)...

Seeing the Grandmother's Garden at the Iowa Quilt Museum has given me new hope for our family heirloom quilt top.

It's too bad my sister Ronda doesn't read this blog...but, then again -- she is only interested in making ragged edge blankets.  So I don't see her tackling this project.....so it will fall to her daughters. 

Hummm...I could post this blog on their Facebook pages...

Good Luck, Amy and Nicole!  You will be the FIFTH generation to not finish this Grandmother's Garden quilt...