H. Hankin Quilt Project

Nancy Hankin, an artist from Villanova, Pa had been saving a treasure trove of beautiful handmade knitwear for 40 years.  Her mother Harriet, also an artist, was a prolific knitter.  During the 60's through 80's Harriet had knitted an amazing body of work which included finished, lined Chanel like suits, soft unstructured jacket and dress suits, as well as a serious amount of sweaters.   The pieces were a snapshot of the of the styles of the time in which they were made, and no one in Nancy's family was interested in wearing them. 

After storing this 100 piece collection for so many years, Nancy wanted to re purpose the knitwear into into quilts that could be given to each of her 7 grandchildren.  She felt that it would be a wonderful memento of their great-grandmothers work that they would always have.  So started the quilt project....to develop 7 quilts + 1 for Nancy.

Normally we make quilts out of woven materials--  but knitted material?  Never did it... but it was an interesting possibility.  

After cleaning all the pieces by washing on gentle cycle with low agitation to prevent shrinkage, the pieces were sorted into color groups to get colors that worked together.  These are the pieces for quilt #4.

 Finally, by quilt #4 how to cut, piece and sew the quilts had been figured out.   The hardest part of each quilt is cutting the pieces into usable sections and then putting them together in some cohesive way.

 

 Each knit has its own amount of stretch so sewing pieces together is not an exact science.  After getting over the fact that it's impossible sew the pieces together perfectly straight sewing became a lot easier.

Each quilt has Harriet's hand knit label placed somewhere on the quilt.

A backing and binding is selected and used to finish the quilt.

                                                                        Finished Quilt # 4