Vintage Tuesday #4

Pink Spider Looking at the Stars
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars

Pink Spider Looking at the Stars is the first quilt I ever finished.* Note the word “finished.” I started my Sampler quilt and got to the quilting point and then stopped. Hand quilting was the order of the day and hand quilting takes a long time.  I was a UFO girl from day one.

Pink Spider Looking at the Stars was the result of a challenge in the small quilt group I belonged to at the time. We were given pieces of all (or most, maybe) of the fabrics and had to make something. These quilts were displayed at an EBHQ show in the early 1990s, or, perhaps 1989. Again, I don’t remember.

Pink Spider Looking at the Stars - detail
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars – detail

I don’t have any good photos of the quilt, but the quilt is around here somewhere, so I could take some if I were motivated to do so.

One thing you might notice is that the design is insane. I made this piece with templates. I didn’t have a rotary kit at the time, though I think I may have bought one shortly thereafter.

You might also notice all of those mitered corners on the binding. The binding was a pain, I have to admit. Most of the time now I keep my quilts square so as to avoid mitered corners. I subscribe to the notion that if you don’t know you can’t do something, then you can do it. Nota bene: hanging out in space without a space suit is the exception.

From an early quilt age, I could do Y-seams, which is why I know you can do them. Although these are 6 rather than 8-pointed stars, there are a lot of Y-seams. I had done an 8-pointed star in my sampler class and figured 6 would be similar or easier.

Seeing this quilt might give you a clue as to why my hackles raise a bit when I see Half Square Triangles classified as “intermediate”. HA!

 

 

 

 

*Vintage is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I am using it to denote old stuff in this series of posts

Vintage Tuesday #3

Parakeet Embroidery
Parakeet Embroidery

I have a lot of needlework from my female ancestors. I am starting to have a hard time appreciating it, because It is taking up space in my cupboards and not all of it is my style. Yet I feel compelled to keep it. I know this is how the Young Man will feel when all the quilts I feel compelled to make are dumped on his living room floor when I am dead.

Parakeet Embroidery-detail
Parakeet Embroidery-detail

This dresser scarf is actually one of the pieces that I like and use. the birds look very cheerful in this piece.

We had parakeets when I was a kid and, though, they were messy, they also made a cheerful noise. We had a green (Bilbo) and a blue one (Gandalf). As an aside: My mom named them, I think, because I would have never named them after characters in the Lord of the Rings series.

I like the embroidery because the cheerful personality of the birds comes through.

Parakeet Embroidery-detail
Parakeet Embroidery-detail

I also like the way the stitching was done. It isn’t really dense, so the stitches seem to have some air to breathe.

I haven’t ever seen an embroidery with this pattern before and it makes me wonder if it is unusual.

I think this one must have been made by my maternal great grandmother, because of the tatting around the edge. I don’t remember my grandmother ever doing tatting.

I looked for an image of the pattern, so I could give some background for those of you history buffs, but didn’t come up with anything. ‘The’ Google’s precision is really lacking. I would love to be able to filter more, but they have dumbed their system down enough that it is nearly unusable for difficult searches.

I’ll add the information if I find it later.

 

Vintage Tuesday #2

Grandma Betty's Quilt - full
Grandma Betty’s Quilt – full

While I was visiting my Grama a few weeks ago, my mom pulled a quilt out of the cedar chest (I know! wrong on so many levels).

Huh?

A quilt? Huh? I really was confused because my Grama is a not a quilt person. She enjoys the one I gave her, but she doesn’t want more. I have no idea why I have never seen this quilt before.

Apparently, my sister has known about this quilt for awhile and always uses it when she sleeps over at Grama’s.

This quilt is referred to as Grandma Betty’s quilt. Grandma Betty was a woman who drove out to California from Chicago with my Grama, her brother (Uncle Gene), their father (Grandpa George, yes I knew him) and Grandma Betty’s daughter. I am not sure who drove, but Grandma Betty owned the car. I’ll have to ask Grama more about that trip.

Grandma Betty's Quilt- detail
Grandma Betty’s Quilt- detail

This is the first time I have heard this story and was amazed. The quilt is in terrible condition, but has a lovely soft look and feel to it.

If my quilts look like this in 70 years, I will be happy. It means they were loved.

Grandma Betty's Quilt- detail 2
Grandma Betty’s Quilt- detail 2

Vintage Tuesday

Floral Nine Patch 1996
Floral Nine Patch 1996

I visited my grandmother last week and noticed a quilt I made hanging on the wall of her guest room.

I made this quilt in 1996 according to the information on my webpage about the quilt. I am pretty sure I gave it to her around that time, but her husband wouldn’t let her hang it up and it wasn’t even large enough for a lap sized quilt so I didn’t see the quilt for years. My Grama gives everything away, so I thought it was long gone.

I also made one for my grandfather. That one used plaid blocks and went to my aunt when my grandfather died. I don’t know what happened to it when my aunt died in 2007. it has a label, so, perhaps, it will end up in the IQSC someday. Hopefully, it is not being used as a dogbed in the back of someone’s station wagon.

The blocks are from a swap on the Q-XCHG list. I could see some of the names written on the blocks.

The Q-XCHG list was a listserv hosted at a university back in the Internet dark ages when there was only text on the web. It was a companion list dedicated to swaps of QuiltNet, the mother of all lists, blogs — everything quilty on the web except, perhaps, Usenet.

I realize that many of these words mean nothing to those of you who have joined the Web quilting community since the advent of the visual web. Just keep in mind that there was a web before there were blogs and we still managed to swap and have fun.