Saturday, March 30, 2013

What Was On the Bed

Time for a different quilt on the bed, so before I removed it, I took a couple pictures.....


This quilt was published (minus the borders) in a Better Homes & Gardens craft magazine of some kind in the late 70's.  Quite possibly it was one of their issues of gifts to make for Christmas.  At the time, I was teaching in an inner city school in Peoria, Illinois and having to search diligently to find fabrics that were 100% cotton.

This quilt was completely hand pieced (the old fashioned way) from 60-degree diamonds with two-inch sides. I don't think I had any knowledge of English paper piecing at the time. And, let's face it, traditional piecing was much easier for diamonds this size.

Within a couple of years I had moved to Tennessee, and while I had the templates [made from Shrinky Dink plastic], patches and some fabrics close to me, the pattern/magazine was hidden in a box somewhere.  I remember going to the library at Lee College and looking the magazine up on microfiche to see how the quilt was bordered. It turned out none of the photos showed the borders; neither were they included in the instructions.

I decided this would be my "millennium quilt,"  meaning I'd be happy to finish it by the year 2000.  When sometime in the 1980's, a group of us had founded the Cherokee Blossom Quilt Guild and affiliated ourselves with the Tennessee Valley Quilt Association, the state organization brought Ginny Beyer to Knoxville to conduct a series of workshops.  She invited us to bring quilts for which we needed borders.  Another Cherokee Blossom member and I were lucky enough to attend her workshop.

She helped me come up with a way to finish the edge of the layout with half-stars and helped me design the border that contains the triangles.  I remember working to piece this border section onto the quilt when I was sitting in the Albuquerque airport waiting for a friend to get off work when I came to interview for jobs in New Mexico.


 I quilted it on my hand quilting frame sitting in front of a bay window in the house we rented in Gallup and was quite happy when I finished it twelve years early!

Many of these fabrics were gathered from a wide variety of merchants, including Calfee's Grocery on Spring Place Road on the south side of Cleveland, TN, which had a fairly large fabric department because Mrs. Calfee liked to sew and make quilts.  (At least, that's what I was told.)  So much of the fabric has faded because the fabric companies saw no need for more than a few hours of light-fastness.  Obviously, they were clueless about how many yards of fabric could be sold to quiltmakers for stash enhancement.

I also taught classes at Chandler Fabrics, and remember when Bill Chandler came back from a large industry show remarking how so many fabric merchants were all doom and gloom and that the only happy people there were the people who owned quilt shops.  Compared to the huge numbers of fabric lines today, we were in a fabric desert back then!

Lots of memories in this quilt.

Happy quiltmaking.....

10 comments:

Quilting Babcia said...

What a beautiful quilt, with a great story. I think I've used one of those light brown fabrics in an older quilt, which I no longer have so cannot be sure. Happy Easter!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

Pretty quilt. Love the scrappyiness of it.

Pokey said...

It is a true family heirloom, complete with history to go along with it! Having only done this pattern (or one like it) in epp, I realize the dedication it took to make this beauty. Happy Easter Blessings to you, my friend ~
:-}pokey

Auntie Em said...

Thanks for sharing your story about this quilt. Love the "finished it 12 years early" comment. What a great way to look at it!

Rosemary Dickinson said...

Love the look of this quilt. It's scrappy and has that hand quilted look. It's becoming so rare! Hold on to this treasure!

MQuilter said...

I enjoyed your story on the life of this pretty quilt that has traveled far. I look at this quilt and think Spring.

Lynn said...

Thank you for the tour and story, I feel almost like we just had tea!

Lynn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Grit said...

Wow this quilt looks so wonderful.
Grit from Germany

Stitches said...

That quilt is gorgeous, you did a wonderful job making and quilting it. It just looks ready to cuddle up in. Stars are always a favorite of mine. Beautiful...

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