Mary's Forward Progress: January Start

Project #11 on my Making Forward Progress list is the Irish Chain quilt. This quilt top was pieced by my great-great grandmother (probably in the 1930s) and when my grandmother died (1987) I inherited it along with several finished quilts and some other tops. At that point I had never quilted, but decided to give it a try and began hand-quilting this top. I quite liked quilting and have made lots of my own quilts since then. The hand quilting of this huge quilt has never gotten finished though. The very next step to move this project forward is to quilt the next square. Most of the checker-board blocks in the quilt are quilted, I haven't counted how many remain but I think it is only a few. The big obstacle to completing this quilt is figuring out what to quilt in all the large open blocks. My goal for the month is to complete as many of checkered blocks as possible, maybe even all of them.

Irish Chain Quilt in progress, January 2017