The Journey #2

This is a continuation of my Journey Series, my quilts in photos and stories. See the first one here:

The Journey #1

In October 1988 my husband retired from the United States Marine Corps after 23 years of service and we moved from Virginia to Alabama. about an hour north of the small town he grew up in. I happily agreed to move to Alabama when I learned they had a quilt guild with 100 members and a quilt shop with 1000 bolts. It also meant winter without snow, most years, and that was fine with me.

The Heritage Quilters of Huntsville welcomed me with open arms and I was quickly on the board for a few years then targeted to be president. I am still very active with my guild and it has been an important part of my quilt journey. The best thing for me has been all the top-notch, first rate teachers the guild has brought in over the last 30 years, affording me a chance to learn from the best.

I attended my first HQH meeting the 3rd Thursday of October, 1988. It was their first challenge and they didn't take time for Show and Tell. I was disappointed because I had brought several quilts. After the meeting the owner of the local quilt shop, Linda Worley of Patches & Stitches, asked to see my quilts and soon thereafter I started teaching in her shop. So it all worked out for me.

At that first meeting I learned about their "Fan Block Swap". The next month the swap would involve Christmas fabrics in the fan blocks, the guild logo. In November I made a fan block and won the 10 blocks in the drawing. I went to work making 3 more so I could use this layout and at the December meeting I showed the top I had worked hard to get ready:

6. Christmas Around the Country--1989:

The members were shocked at my top--no one have ever made a top from the blocks they had won before. I thought we were SUPPOSED to make a top. I started hand quilting this one and it was done August 25, 1989 so I could enter it in the guild's first quilt show September 1989. It won a third place in the Group Category and I was thrilled!

I was particularly pleased with the quilting design I created, using freezer paper and cardboard. I still have this stencil. And the green thread was a bold choice, but I like it. The design in the dark green sashing was a stencil I bought, my collection of stencils was growing:

My quilt was also featured on the cover of "Christmas Year 'Round, Jan-Feb 1991:

7. Josh's Arrowheads--1989:

I was starting to enjoy using lots of fabrics in my quilts and this next one was a pattern in a magazine, the design was called Arrowheads. I gave it to my son who had an arrowhead collection of those he found several different places, including his PawPaw's farm, and our local neighborhood.  He recently told me it is worn out in places and he wants me to fix it. This is the first quilt I machine quilted, and I found THAT is not as easy as you might think.

8. A Christmas Carol--1989:

About this time, the editor of a new magazine "Christmas Year 'Round" commissioned me to make this log cabin wallhanging for their upcoming Premier first issue. The deadline was short but I met it, keeping track of the 54.5 hours it took me. I got the fabrics from Patches & Stitches and when the issue came out, unbeknownst to the shop, there was a notice with the photo that kits were available and the phone number to the shop. 

The demand was overwhelming, the phone rung almost constantly, and more than 300 kits were mailed out. Because I had made the quilt a year before publication, substitutions of some fabrics were necessary. Imagine the shock we had when we discovered the magazine had incorrectly figured the yardage for the most important fabric--they wrote the pattern, I did not. All the kits were cut short! Three hundred additional strips of that one fabric were mailed out. 

Eventually, the phone stopped ringing and the shop got back to normal. Imagine their surprise when, about  a year after the original mailing, the magazine was sent out free to subscribers of some other magazines. Demand was back again and more kits were made. 

Ironically, this commission involved them getting to keep the quilt so I  don't have one of these. But lots of people do. Throughout the 1990's I made many quilts for this publisher, for "Christmas Year 'Round", "Country Stitch" and "McCall's Quilting". Now I wrote the patterns and I got to keep the quilts after they were photographed for the magazines.

9. Alabama Broken Star--1991

This quilt is king-size and was a commission I made. My only stipulation was the owner would meet me at Patches & Stitches and pay for all the fabrics and  I would get it done as soon as possible but without a deadline. And I had to be able to enter it in the guild quilt show.

The label I printed and put on the back says:

"The pattern is adapted from the pattern available in the Land's End Christmas 1989 catalog. 114" x 104", 100 % cotton fabrics, polyester batting. 

Begun August 25, 1990, completed July 15, 1991. It required 50 hours to piece by machine and 275 hours to quilt by hand and finish."

I kept track of my hours because I had set the price for the job before beginning. I underestimated, by 100 hours, how long the quilting would take. The price was set to give me the money needed to replace our old garage door. About half-way through, my husband said "Let's just hang the quilt over the garage door so you can keep it".  Here is a shot showing the quilting, hanging in the HQH 1991 quilt show:

This cured me of doing any more bed-size commissions. From then on it was only the magazines I sewed and quilted for. 

10. Charm Quilt--1992

When we moved from Virginia to Alabama, I was involved in a year-long block swap with my Virginia guild. That kept on, we just had to mail blocks to each other now. I chose a Thousand Pyramid's pattern--each person pieced 9 triangles into one large triangle and signed their block somewhere on the front. It was begun in 1988 and finished December 23, 1992. I hand quilted it with an intricate geometric design I created that you can't see. It represents the friendships in quilting started with  my first guild. The title is: "Quilt Shop Nightmare--I'd Like a Quarter Yard of Everything, Please".

Thanks for coming along on the Journey.

Let's quilt.

Barbara