I recently posted about our Christmas celebration at my MIL’s house and the ugly quilt tops some of us got in our box of goodies. Now don’t get me wrong…. I love the quilts my MIL has given me. For most of her 93 years she has quilted. I have several of the most beautiful quilts she has made. I even have one that she made in the 1930’s when she was only in her 20’s. She is from the old school of hand quilting. NO machine quilting for this lady. She always spent as much time on the hand quilting as she did on putting the quilt blocks together. So to say that each of her quilts is a labor of love is an understatement. To this day she will sit in front of one of her 5 sewing machines for hours each day and put quilt blocks together. She loves material and loves creating something useful out of things that others discard. She cuts up old clothing and she used to go to garage sales and pick up boxes of material. Her house is a fire hazard with boxes and boxes of material piled up. That’s another story altogether.
She has given each of us a quilt when we got married. That quilt was given with a wish that the quilt would cover us and keep us warm in our most personal time together. The picture below is my wedding quilt. We have used it for 31 years and the edges are frayed and many of the pieces have totally disintegrated in the wash.
The next quilt is my favorite “new” quilt. I bought the material and picked out the pattern and Mom put it together and quilted it for me. The pattern is a fan pattern and what you can’t see is all the design in the quilting. Most people look at the quilt block and don’t see the tiny intricate stitches that hold the quilt together. Her stitches were so tiny and so perfect.
I used this quilt as a bed spread in my spare room for a several years but as the grandkids got older I decided that I needed to put it away for safe keeping.
The next quilt is my oldest quilt. Mom told me that she made this quilt before she and my FIL got married. Since that was over 65 years ago she thought that she made it when she was in her 20’s. She said that her mother helped her quilt it. I knew that this would be an important quilt for my husband. As you look at this quilt I want you to be aware of two things. First, the little quilt squares are 1″ squares. Yes, hundreds thousands of tiny little 1″ squares sewn into a design. I have calculated that there are approximately 156 full circles and 32 tiny squares form each circle and add the quarter circles along the edge of the quilt and you easily have over 5000 tiny 1″ squares of material sewn into this wedding ring design. Multiply that by the thousands of stitches that form the design and there is a lot of time and love in this beautiful quilt. Second, this quilt survived the dust bowl, 50+ years of marriage, five sons and a million washings. Incredible isn’t it!
I hate that I referred to any of the quilt tops that I received at Christmas as ugly. No, they don’t have any color coordination and a couple of them are very badly sewn but they are labors of love none the less. I will post photos of them on my next post.
Am I a lucky girl or what? I have all these pieces of art and they were made by a loving woman, the woman who raised this wonderful man I am getting to spend my life with.
4 Comments
January 10, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I happened upon your post as I read blogs tagged “Family.” The quilts are all beautiful. The wedding ring one is amazing. Thanks for posting these.
I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for stopping by.
January 11, 2009 at 9:14 am
The quilts are amazing! Being a quilter myself, my eyes first went to the actual quilting on the 1st one before looking at the overall quilt. Being a “modern” quilter, I have done very little hand quilting, but enough to fully appreciate the work involved. The quilting is usually the first thing that draws my eye when I see a quilt. My Mom got into quilting, with a group of friends, back in the 70’s. They would go to Helen’s Quilt Shop, 50 miles away, every Tuesday night for years! They learned to hand piece the blocks, hand sew the blocks together and finally t0 hand quilt the finished project. I now have the quilt that she made during that time and all it needs is to have about 2 feet of the binding hand stitched and it will be done. I need to get it out and finish it, and take pictures of course! It’s a sampler, with many different & beautiful blocks. I also have several boxes of UFO’s of hers, that consist of completed hand pieced blocks, thread and backing, all boxed up and ready to be put together. Before she passed, she encouraged me to machine piece them, but it seemed so wrong! I need to do that tho’, cuz I haven’t the time or patience to do it by hand! Sad, isn’t it?! The fabric & color choices from that time period are not much to my liking (what was wrong with us in the 70’s? hee hee) but I will finish them and someday her 3 great grand-daughters will be thrilled to have them.
By all means finish that quilt and keep it for your grand-daughters. I can’t think of any thing more precious.
January 11, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Old quilts done by hand are truly labors of love. Love your quilts and can’t wait to see the ‘ugly’ ones on your next post.
Di
The Blue Ridge Gal
Well, they really aren’t ugly, just not very color coordinated.
January 11, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I’m still so mad at myself for taking a 3/4 finished quilt to a lady to finish for me. She moved and I guess took my quilt along with her and it was one I started when my first born was a baby and I didn’t know if I was having a girl or boy and made it pink, which we both know wasn’t the right choice. Grrr…..LADY in Clinton, if you are reading this……send me back my quilt, please!!!!!
That stinks! How long ago did you take it to her?