Quilts by Unknown Grandmas

I am surrounded in this photo by 3 wonderful quilts and a quilt top lovingly stitched by unknown quilters from the past.

The blue and white Sawtooth Diamond in a Square is from Holmes County Ohio, probably from the last quarter of the 19th century. It has tiny hearts concealed in the hand quilting. The quilting also includes feathers, overlapping circles, double diagonals, and one inch grid. The blue fabric has groups of 3 tiny stars in a triad formation. The backing is plain muslin.

The poison green dot and double pink dot Feathered Star in the bottom right hand corner is from Gettysburg PA from the civil war era. It is hand pieced and hand quilted in diagonal lines and grid. The backing is a double pink print that resembles popcorn scattered on an abstract background.

The hand embroidered redwork baby quilt in the top left corner is dated 1910. There is hand quilting in the corners of the blocks to form a diamond in a diamond.

The Grandmother's flower garden top on the chair is probably from the 1930's.

The Folkart Heart wall hanging in the bottom left corner is a wall hanging I made using fabrics purchased in New Orleans when we travelled there to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. It is machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted.

Not quilty but lots of fun

Our daughter made a beautiful red shirt with a collar and buttons down the front for our grandson to wear for Christmas. Unfortunately, the newborn size from that pattern turned out to be too large, so I quickly made this cross-over style using the same fabric print. I made the black frog closures as well. They seemed to add the right touch with the Chinese characters in the print. With no collar, the shirt needed a red onesie under it, so I made one from a soft cotton knit, and also a little pair of black flannel pants. Red socks completed the ensemble. He looked very sweet wearing his Christmas outfit.

Cradle Liner

This photo shows the quilted liner in place in the cradle. It is densely machine quilted using bubble quilting in a variety of shades of blue thread. The smaller photo shows a detail of the quilting. Click on it for a better look.

2nd Generation Pine Cradle

Dad built this wonderful pine cradle for his first grandchild, our daughter. It was used by the babies of that generation and now it is being handed down to our grandson. To freshen it up, I machine quilted a Winnie the Pooh cradle liner using Pat Sloan's bubble technique. I will post a detail of the quilting in the next post. The pastel quilt in the cradle is new, but has that lovely vintage puckery look and feel. It is machine quilted in a diamond grid.

A Pooh Quilt for Our Grandson

My daughter and I are collaborating on a crib quilt for the nursery. The theme is vintage Winnie the Pooh and she found this lovely alphabet panel with a Pooh and Friends vignette on it. I added borders, backing and batting, and did some machine quilting on it. After binding, I turned it over to my daughter to do some hand quilting in the alphabet blocks and in the outside border. The nursery has pale gold walls with a vintage Pooh border around the top.

Treasured Memories

One of my favourite quilts is Treasured Memories. I started it for my husband in 1999 and completed it in 2003. It is a derivative quilt of the Jane Stickle Quilt in the Bennington Museum in Vermont. It has 169 different block designs, 52 triangles, and 4 corner kites. Jane made it during the American Civil War and she signed it and counted the number of pieces of fabric she used to make it. I used Brenda Papadakis' book to make this quilt, and found that it was an excellent teaching quilt, as a great variety of techniques can be used and combined when making these tiny 4 1/2 inch blocks. I learned to reverse applique and to foundation paper piece while working on these blocks, and made many friends around the world as shared tips online. The tiny blocks are very portable, and I carried them with me to work on while travelling, canoe camping, waiting for appointments, and visiting. My blocks are constructed using machine piecing, foundation paper piecing, hand applique, hand reverse applique, and hand piecing. I quilted it by hand. It is very heavily quilted, and the plain triangles feature a feathered quilting motif of my own design.

Turkey Red and Cheddar Mariner's Compass

This turkey red and cheddar mariner's compass is one of my mother's favourite quilts. Her mother machine pieced it on a treadle sewing machine. She hand quilted a daisy with 2 posies in the background corners surrounding the compass, using white quilting thread. The red border has the egg and dart motif quilted in it. The outside border has an undulating "U" shaped vine. This quilt has a very thin cotton batt with tiny brown seed flecks. The off-white cotton background fabric and backing is quite coarse in texture. In place of binding, the back is brought to the front and hand-stitched in place.
The right side of the quilt was in shadows at the quilt show, so the border looks very dark, but it is not dark in real life.

The Family Baby Quilt

This appliqued and pieced indigo and cheddar crib quilt lay safely tucked away in Mom's hope chest for decades. She does not recall the quilt ever being used at home when she was growing up, and neither did her older sisters. I have spoken to appraisers and quilt collectors about it, and they believe it was made in the last quarter of the 19th century. That would mean it could have been made by my great-grandmother Susannah. I feel very honoured to be the custodian of this lovely quilt, preserving it for future generations.

Some of my Quilting Grandmas

Today I am sharing a treasured 1910 portrait of some of my quilting grandmas. I know that my Grandma Esther ( second from the right) was a quilter and Mom has some of her quilts. A favourite one is a pieced turkey red and cheddar mariner's compass on muslin.

We think that Great-Grandma (second from the left) may have made a wonderful indigo and cheddar appliqued and pieced baby quilt, which has been entrusted to me for safekeeping. It is made from hand-dyed fabrics, using Scherenschnitte, a German papercutting technique, and hand quilted with linen thread. Some crocking has occurred over the years, but it is still very beautiful in its simplicity. I hope to make a modern version of it for our grandson to use.

I will share photos of these two quilts in my next post.

A fresh page......

Many wonderful and creative blogs and their authors have inspired me to take a first tentative step into a world that seems at once slightly intimidating, and yet enticing and mysterious. As January 1st presents the opportunity for new beginnings, I embrace this challenge, in celebration of becoming a quilting grandma.

My love of quilting was inherited from quilting grandmas on both sides of my family. I did not have the good fortune of meeting many of them, but at a recent quilt show, I was able to share examples made by five generations of stitchers in my mother's family.

My mother does not consider herself to be a quilter, but in keeping with Waterloo County tradition, she made tops for my three sisters and I, and had them hand quilted as wedding gifts. Mine was actually begun in the 1940's, prior to her own wedding, and patterned after a favourite quilt made by her mother. She set it aside carefully in her hope chest while becoming a farm wife, raising children, sewing clothing, gardening, canning, church and community service, and other interests and commitments occupied her time. When I became engaged in 1970, the project was retrieved and completed, and my husband and I were the fortunate recipients of a very beautiful and special quilt. Recently, Mom gave me the original tissue paper templates she had traced from Grandma's quilt and some fabric scraps she had saved.

One of my current ongoing projects is recreating a redwork quilt made by my paternal grandmother, and although not conclusively documented, we believe it to be her first quilt, begun as a young girl learning to stitch penny squares. This quilt currently resides in my cousin's home in Lancaster County, PA, but I have many memories of it gracing a guest bed in my grandfather's home. A few years ago, I traced all the blocks from the original quilt, and now I take squares along with me in my busy bag, to stitch on in odd moments. While growing up, a lovely 1940's Little Dutch Girl quilt, made by Grandma Olive's hands, kept me warm and cosy. In later years I have often taken it with me as a comfort from home when I had to be away from my family for a period of time. Dad often tells about playing under the quilting frame when the ladies came to help Grandma quilt. He takes an interest in my latest projects, and when he recently moved to a long term care residence, one of his first requests was for a wall hanging for his room. He also has a log cabin lap quilt which he uses in his recliner and on his bed.

In coming days and weeks, I hope to share photos and stories of heritage quilts, my completed quilts, new quilts and other projects in progress, and of course, grandma anecdotes.