Kathy's Quilts

Last week I said I was turning the blog over to you readers, and a few have sent along pictures of treasured quilts. I am just loving seeing these precious pieces.

Kathy Osborne shared pictures of her mother’s quilts and they got me to thinkin’…

She mentioned how she loved that they had just used whatever fabric they had on hand “the mismatched is the best,” she said. And I completely agree!

I’ll bet if we could talk with this quilter, we’d soon learn that these are fabrics leftover from sewing projects for her family. Maybe they were even clothes that had been worn many times and when she had to ‘retire’ a piece, she found parts that had enough life left to make a quilt square.

There are two different quilts here, one from the 1960’s and another from the ‘40s.

I want to particularly draw your attention to the back of the older quilt. Don’t you just love that little floral and rose print? Now this side was only meant to hold the pieces together and lie against the bed. Quilt backings got little attention yet they are sometimes the most interesting part.

There are two entirely different fabrics here. Now I’ve mentioned before that very wide pieces of fabric are relatively new - since the introduction of commercial looms. Of course these are certainly commercially-produced fabrics, but the backing may well have been something already on-hand, possibly for another project. Many quilters of Mrs. Griffith’s generation would’ve never thought to go buy fabric for a quilt; quilts were something made of scraps, even the backing. Still, she has tried to match the fabrics as closely as she could - using two light red florals with blue accents, rather than making an entirely patched backing which would have been even more difficult to quilt through - and that one is handquilted.

How I wish I could pepper these two ladies with questions, or even just sit around a quilt frame and work alongside them. I just know they could teach me not only about quilting but all of life!

Your Quilts

Some of my favorite Quilts

I just love hearing from my readers. I can never find the words to describe how honored I feel when someone tells me they sat up half the night because they couldn’t put down one of my books. And when I hear you saying that a blog article or series reminded you of your mother or grandmother, I feel like the greatest success on the internet!

So, as I continue working on my quilt repair, this week I want to hear from you - I’m turning the blog over to the readers!

Please send me pictures of your favorite quilts - maybe it’s one you made with your grandmother, or one of hers that you inherited. Maybe it’s a quilt you remember using at your mother’s house, or wrapping your babies in.

If you have a story to go along with the picture, that’s all the better.

You can share in lots of ways: 1. In the comments below; 2. Post it on my Facebook page; 3. Email me at: Beth@BethDurham.com.

I can’t wait to hear from you!

Reader Mary Lou McKillip shared a great quilting-bee story with me this week, so I’ll start you off with it :

I was 8 years old and our church ladies were making quilts for the children orphans home. Dad built Mother a quilting house (two rooms) a large room for quilting and a small kitchen to cook lunch for all the ladies with a large tables and chairs ,he had a large pot belly stove in the quilting room. It was on a Saturday and I was playing with my kitten Lucy under the quilt.mama didn’t Dad  had put in new stove pipe and left the old one on the porch . Mama told me to take the kitten and play on the porch . That darn cat got down in the stove pipe and got suit all over her all you could see was her eyes. I ran back inside to show the ladies and Lucy jump out my arms and landed on the new quilt She made paw prints all over that new quilt. I finally caught her and Mama sent me and her back to the Big House with dad. She told me to get a pan and bath her with dad helping me but while we were getting a pan of water she got up on Mamas white bed spread and tracked it up. (Solid white with French  knots) boy my fanny got it.

Quilt Repair Chronicle Week 4 Remembering Quilting Bees

Every day or two I pickup my quilt and add another line if stitching. 

I was thinking about how often I’ve blogged about quilting from one perspective or another and wanted to remind you of a story I shared back in 2014.  This is the story of an unplanned quilting bee.  I’ve heard it many times through the years and I love the sense of community.   I’d welcome such an event about now!

Golda Stepp laid out the layers of her quilt and carefully smoothed the fabric.  As she tacked one end to the frame she wondered if she was starting this too early in the season.  You put a quilt up to work on when the weather is cool.  Summer months are filled with hoeing and canning.  Anyway, it’s hot in the summer and who wants to sit under the layers of a quilt inside the house when it’s hot?  Nonetheless Golda had a lovely quilt top that she was eager to finish and she had found a good quantity of unbleached domestic that made a fine backing so she would start this quilt today.

With the layers attached to one frame and the quilt rolled up as tightly as possible, she had just finished tacking the loose end to the remaining frame when she was called away by some inconsequential necessity of life, laundry or children or something like that. 

She was just finishing the housework when she heard a light knocking and a familiar voice calling, “Goldie, you home?”  Her husband’s aunt, Bessie Baldwin had stopped in for a quick visit. 

Coming through the front door, the quilt frame caught Aunt Bessie’ eye hung in the front bedroom.  “Oh, you’ve put up a quilt.  Do you want me to run a line for ya?”

Quilts have many purposes and warmth while sleeping may be the least of these.  The fellowship around a work-in-progress is priceless.  So the two ladies took seats on opposite sides of the quilting frame and began their work.  As needles flashed and straight lines of neat stitches inched their way behind them, Golda and Bessie caught up on the news of the family and the neighborhood.  Hours can be lost in such work and the morning was gone before they realized it.

Whether it was the lowing of a cow, or the laughter of the children, something prompted Bessie to take her first look at the clock.  “Well it’s half-past eleven.  I’ve got to go fix Rufus some dinner.  But I’ll be back as soon as he’s headed back to the field.  We’ll get some more work done on this quilt before supper.”

Golda smiled, having enjoyed the visit and happy to see the progress on her pretty quilt.  The Stepps would need their noon meal as well and so the quilt had to wait a couple of hours. 

It was not later than one o’clock when the happy chatter of not just one faithful quilter but four could be heard coming down the lane.  Bessie had met her younger sister, Gretchel Baldwin and enlisted her help for the afternoon.  Gretchel brought along her own daughter and a visiting girlfriend. 

Now there were five needles flashing, and three were very experienced quilters.  A full quilting frame might see a whole quilt finished in a day.  This quilt went from the very beginning stages to more than half finished before the visitors had to go home for the evening.  And everyone was pleased with both the visit and the work accomplished.

Repair Chronicle Week 3 New Week New Problems

Appliqued Cat quilt hiding behind simple Nine Patch Top

When I undertook to blog on the process of repairing a vintage quilt, I forgot how SLOWLY I quilt!  Still I stitch on.

Right now it’s all about quilting this new top onto the existing top, batting (with some replacement pieces of batting) and the original backing.  This is a slow process for me in the best of conditions, largely because my Grandma Livesay has fussed so many times about people who quilt in long, sloppy stitches, and her voice rings in my head as I work.  Okay, there are a number of things from my childhood I’ve tried to outgrow and that lesson is one of the big ones. 

If you are willing to sit and put the work into making a whole quilt, I’m going to try very hard not to criticize the work you are doing.  Maybe I’m saying that because my quilting ain’t lookin’ too good on this one!

I am finding it very difficult to stitch through not just the extra layer of fabric but the thick, bunched-up old batting too.  That’s resulting in uneven stitches and many longer-than-desired stitches.

Tack Quilting

I mentioned previously that I had to choose how to secure this new top onto the quilt and I chose against the “tack-quilting” option.  Here are some pictures of a quilt that was repaired by tacking on a new top.  I’ve peeled away a portion of the replacement top to reveal a beautiful appliqued cat quilt, with many holes and missing pieces. 

Take a look at the backing this practical quilter chose.  It’s two different fabrics that have been sewn together.  This is the preferred backing, but is common especially on old quilts because fabric wide enough to cover the entire width of a bed or quilt were rare and costly.  Do you notice that the fabric she chose hid the seam so well?  The top portion of fabric is printed as patchwork while the lower, brown fabric, is the added piece.  I suspect she had this fabric on hand, for if she’d bought it for this purpose, would have undoubtedly added another piece of the same print.

Uncovering the mystery behind this Nine Patch top felt like a combination of Christmas morning and an archeological dig.  I didn’t know what I’d find or whether it would be at all salvageable yet I could hardly wait to see the quilt underneath.  I will certainly plan to repair this one someday – but I’d better finish the whole-cloth repair first, hadn’t I?

Quilt Repair Chronicle Week 2 Patches On

I’m slow.  Summer is a bad time to make a quilt.  There are lots of distractions… Okay there are LOTS OF EXCUSES!  I’m thinking my Grandma could’ve had this quilt repaired in a day, maybe two if there was other stuff going on.  And here I am wrapping up week two and I’ve not made much of a showing on it. 

After I decided I’d cover one side with a quilt top I already had on hand, I tried to choose the best side for patching – no sense in applying more patches than necessary, right?  I stitched on about 4 patches, using just a running stitch.  I plan to go back and add an applique stitch to secure those corners.  However, I’m trying not to wrestle it around more than necessary so after the patches were securely in place I’ve basted the new quilt top on.

Then there’s the question of quilting.  Of course I need to do this by hand – I may be handling it very delicately but I couldn’t expect a machine quilter to do the same, and anyway I don’t know that this old fabric would survive the whole process.  I have another old quilt that has been re-covered and that one was tack-quilted.  I’m afraid to try that in this case because there are a number of actual holes and I’m pretty sure I need to secure both the fabric and the new batting that I’m adding.

Speaking of batting, I’ve added batting under each of the patches and I have it basted in at the binding edge.  The original batting had really balled-up between the quilting and when the fabric wore through it was coming out like stuffing.  I’ve pulled out as much of the old batting as I could without causing further damage and I’m trying to replace that padding.

I have basted half of the quilt and have the other half carefully rolled and clamped.  I’ve quilted a could of lines, just moving along the green strips that join the patch strips.  We’ll see where I get to next week!