The Generations Quilt: October 2025 Project Meeting

Hello Friends and Welcome!

Earlier this month, Mom and I had the chance to visit Grandma and talk a little more about our plans for the Generations Quilt project moving forward!

For anyone who hasn't been following along; the Generations Quilt project is an intergenerational quilt collaboration between myself, my Mom, my Grandma, and my Great Grandmother.

We started with a collection of Dresden Plate and Six Pointed Star blocks left behind when my Great Grandmother passed away, and each of us made more of those blocks in our own unique style. We hope to use those blocks to make several smaller quilts to be shared with the family!

After several years of work, we have finally finished making blocks and are ready to start assembling quilt tops!

Block Progress

Before we start putting the blocks together, I wanted to show off the work that everyone has put into this project so far, and make a tally of the finished blocks!

Let's start with Great Grandmother's blocks!

She has a distinctly traditional style that's very reminiscent of her generation; you can see this in the vintage prints, the very scrappy nature of the blocks, and the use of garment fabric in some places.

All together, we have 30 Dresden Plate blocks, some of which were appliqued by my Grandma, and 20 Six Pointed Star blocks made by my Great Grandmother!

Grandma's style is also pretty traditional, but she had the opportunity to work with commercial quilting fabrics, available in a wide range of prints and colours. She used fabric that was left over from past projects, typically small floral prints and solid or semi solid blender fabrics in corresponding colours, but was more selective in her fabric placement than Great Grandmother had been.

Due to her age, Grandma has some difficulty sewing these days. She completed 11 blocks of each pattern, then I took over making blocks with her fabric and doing my best to imitate her colour placement.

All together, we have 30 Dresden Plates and 20 Six Pointed Star blocks in Grandma's style! I also have fabric to make some more Six Pointed Star blocks, just in case we need more of them later!

Taking a look at my Mom's blocks, we can see a bit of an evolution in her style as a quilt maker!

When we first started making blocks, Mom had been imitating the style used by my Great Grandmother; very scrappy and using what fabric she had on hand, mostly remnants from Grandma's quilting fabric and old bits from garments she made when I was young.

But as the project progressed, Mom had been working on other quilts and acquiring fabric remnants that better reflected her own preferences in print and colour. She also became more selective in her colour placement after seeing how Grandma and I chose to put together our blocks, making choices that are uniquely her own!

After working through many different approaches to block assembly, Mom ended up making 21 Six Pointed Star blocks and 20 Dresden Plates! She'll be making one more Dresden Plate block to even that out, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

And finally, we come to my own blocks!

My approach to colour selection is distinctly more modern than the others. I've chosen to bring the white traditionally found in the quilt background into the piecing and use bright colours for the background instead.

I had been working with some other colour combinations when we first started this project, but found the contrast between my blocks and the others was a little too intense. By inverting the traditional colour scheme, I've found something that reflects my approach to fabric selection but which also works well with the blocks made by everyone else!

I've completed 34 blocks of each pattern using these colours, giving me lots of extra blocks for flexibility when we start composing quilt tops!

Planning a Quilt

Now that we know how many blocks we've made, we need to consider how many quilts we want to make, and how big those quilts will be!

We already know we want to make at least three quilts, that way Grandma, Mom, and I can each have one, but since this is a family heritage project, it would be nice if we could share these quilts with our family as well!

If we each include our siblings in the count—Grandma has a brother and sister, Mom has three brothers, and I have a brother and sister—that would bring us to ten quilts. There are also a few close cousins who we see just as often as those siblings, and it would be nice to include them in this project.

All together, we hope to make 10 to 14 quilts, and with the number of blocks we currently have, they would need to be lap sized.

Laying Out Blocks

With those logistics figured out, Mom and I took to the floor to lay out some blocks while Grandma supervised from a comfortable chair.

We started with the Dresden Plate blocks and attempted to lay them out with a colour scheme in mind. Specifically, we tried to find blocks that featured blue and pink prints!

Considering how scrappy Grandma and Great Grandmother's blocks are, the intended colour scheme was largely enforced through Mom's and my blocks.

After discovering this, we decided that adhering to a particular colour scheme really wasn't necessary for the Dresden Plate quilts. Instead, we shifted our focus to colour placement.

Since my blocks have the most contrast when compared to the rest, Grandma preferred that they be placed with intention rather than scattered at random. With that in mind, I came up with these two similar layouts:

The first one features a lot more white in the background area, reflecting the fabric choices made by the others, but still reflects the changes I added to my blocks. The second layout was checker board inspired, and alternated dark and light backgrounds, making my darker blocks feel more intentional.

I think I prefer the white dominant layout over the checker board one, and I know Grandma was a lot happier with the more organized layout than the random one we put together the first time!

After trying a few different layouts, our visit came to an end, and I took all the completed blocks home with me and I have tried out a few more layouts for a slightly larger version of the quilt!

For these, I started with my preferred layout of the two smaller quilts, then changed the triangular filler blocks around the edges into full squares. After seeing the result, I felt like the Dresden Plates were feeling a little cramped, so I adjusted the placement of the four on the outermost corners.

I feel like the final layout has more movement to it, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! But I still think my favourite one is the first of the smaller two layouts, it has a special feeling to it!

And for a little context on the difference in quilt size; the smaller two would finish around 55" to 60" square, and the larger ones would be 75" to 80" square.

After getting together with Mom and Grandma, I now have a slightly better idea of the direction this project will go! I still want to hear their thoughts on the layouts I've played with since then, but hopefully I'll have the first Generations Quilt top put together soon!

In the meantime, I would love to hear all of your thoughts on the layouts I've shared! Or, if there's a different layout that you think I should try, I'd be happy to hear about it! Please let me know in the comments below or we can chat via email!

I can't wait to find out what the first Generations Quilt will look like!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA