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When Martha Scheers began work on an ambitious starburst quilt 75 years ago, her children, grandchildren and great-granddchildren were but a gleam in her eye.
At age 97, the Delhi woman recently had the pleasure of sitting with her family as they completed a project she started in her early 20s.
“Our target was to finish by Valentine’s Day, which we did,” granddaughter Debbie Pierssens said. “So hurray for us.
“It was a blast – all of us getting together and sitting with grandma.”
Near the end of the Second World War, Scheers and her sister Julia Barnes carefully cut hundreds of diamond-shaped bits of fabric and hand-stitched some into starburst panels. Along the way, the pair lost the thread and Barnes shelved the project indefinitely.
“Her creation got moved around from here to there,” Pierssens said. “It was forgotten about, re-discovered, moved to a different location, then forgotten about again.