My Grandmother's Suitcase of UFO's

When my Grandmother passed away, I became the caretaker of all her quilty things.  The saying is 'if walls could talk' ... but I wish that these quilt blocks could talk!

I have a suspicion that some of the things in this suitcase are from my Great Grandmother, and maybe even a Great Great Grandmother or two.  But the blocks aren't talking, and I'll never really know.

On the right is a set of pieced blocks, ready to be topped in the ducks feet pattern.  I'll post these another day.

Today I became focused on what lay beneath in the suitcase.

  

An assortment of indigo blocks.  Most are hand pieced.
Some are machine pieced. Some are poorly pieced.
Some are artfully pieced.

These and all the blocks in the pictures below are just one each's.

They were maybe left over from other projects
or
"I made this one and I don't want to make anymore"

An assortment of stars and star-ish blocks.

The lone star on the left is interesting ... the diamonds
are set in a way that they look like swallows in flight.
I don't think I've ever seen that before.

And an assortment of circle-ish blocks.

The large wagon wheel on the lower right has the brown paper
pattern pinned to it with a piece of fabric in another corner so I
think that it might be left over from a project.

I thought this little block was particularly interesting ... and
how difficult it would be to piece into a block.

Is it maybe intended to be appliqued?

And someone along the way had the same idea that I had
as I went through all these disparate little blocks ... to sew
them all together into a scrappy willy-nilly quilt.

I love the ocean waves blocks.
With indigo centers.

One of my fore-mother's loved indigo or wore a lot of indigo.

I'm sure somewhere among these blocks are
remnants of the clothing of a grand parent I never had the
chance to meet.

That is a wonderful part of old family quilts.
Chances are that indigo fabric was Grandma's old dress.