This week we were tasking with creating something of which we were a fan. Many of you know of my fascination with QUILTS. Whenever I see a quilt, I become reduced to a blithering idiot in awe. My grandmother was a quilter and she would make a quilt, by hand, for every child and then grandchild. The quilts were all greatly revered by the family and many times she would enter them in local craft fair competitions.
My grandmother never made me a quilt because there was some angst within the family that by making a quilt for an adopted child that the "natural" children would get upset. Of course, this was adult stupidity but it made its mark and I never received a quilt. When she died, much to the regret of the "natural" children's parents, my grandmother bequeathed her fabric to me.
For this challenge, I wanted to honor my grandmother with making some quilt square with some of the fabric that she left me. I have been waiting for the right project and decided that this was it.
I started simply by just doing a four block square.
I then make smaller squares but kept it simple.
I then used the smaller squares to make a pattern.
Then I experimented with points and triangles and geometry, oh. my.
Then I tried different shapes (oops, everything just didn't quite measure up.
Finally, I decided to go back to simply shapes that I could control. I had used this pattern in paper quilting and decided to try my hand in real fabric.
I have a new found admiration for people who do quilts. Moreover, I have a greater appreciation of my grandmother and her ability to make this quilts without calculators, computers and the modern convenience of sewing machines and stitchers.
3 comments:
Oh, I can't believe someone who actually say an adopted child doesn't deserve a quilt...make my blood boil. Good for your grandmother leaving you the fabric! Ok, on to nicer things. These look so good & I'm really proud that you gave it a go. You've been talking about trying this for quite awhile. To you think you'll take the plunge to a full on blanket or maybe some throw pillows?
Thanks Kat. It was the time and era and everyone has moved on. I don't know what I plan on doing with the squares. There are several more but I didn't want to inundate the feed with more pics. These were the ones that I could wash and iron in time for the challenge.
I get frustrated when I can't be as precise in other media as I am in paper. So this was a big step but my brain almost burst. I like the idea of doing a border and then turning into a pillow case--I hadn't thought about that.
If I pursue the making of a quilt, I might join an in-person quilting group (quilting bee) to get some mentoring. I would really love to honor my grandmother by making an entire quilt.
I know what you mean about the precision. I took a hand quilting class a couple of years ago and man did we learn to cut things to the exact! I'm interested to see what you decide to do. I see things like this & it makes me want to pull my quilting back out. Maybe after Christmas ;)
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