My Favorite Quilts # 1

 Pieces of the Past--Circa 1875 is one of my most favorite quilts:

Made in 1995, when I had ten years under my belt as a quiltmaker. It is 82" square. I hand quilted it and used wool batt for the first time. It is so cuddly, soft, warm and reminds me of the generations of women quiltmakers who came before me. It spends the winter on our bed as a topper, for those chilly nights when one quilt isn't enough.

THE STORY:

I moved to Alabama from Virginia in 1988 when my husband retired from the United States Marine Corps. He grew up 40 miles south of Huntsville so we came "home". I was sad to leave my small quilt guild, the Virginia Star Quilters of Fredericksburg, but knew there was a guild in Huntsville where I would be welcome. 

Less than a week after we arrived I went to a neighbor's yard sale and found an old top for $5.00. It was brown, my least favorite color. There was one other, it was blue, but a man got to it ahead of me and bought it. I chased him to his car, offered him $10 to let me have it, but he refused, saying "What's the big deal? You got one." He wouldn't have understood brown vs blue so I didn't try but I did beg him not to use it as  a drop cloth, to respect the work it represented.

I spent all day in a slump, unhappy with the top I got. Finally, I was struck on the head with the realization: I had a TREASURE and all I could think about was the one that got away. I studied the top intently and realized it was a really old quilt top.  

It is fragile so rarely leaves the house now. The border fabric is brittle and torn. It just needs to be cared for in its' current condition.

I had only been a quiltmaker for 3 years then and thought all tops had to be quilted. That was why I bought it. But I quickly realized that was not to be. It would never hold up to the stress and time it would take me to quilt it. So I decided to replicate it.

A few years after I bought the top, my guild had a program with Merikay Waldvogel. A noted quilt historian, she asked us to bring any old quilts we had and she put them in date order. There was only one small quilt she dated earlier than mine, it was circa 1865. My top is Circa 1875. 

It is a fabric treasure for those of us who love old fabrics. Hand pieced, it was well made but the fragile fabrics just haven't held up. Fortunately, it wasn't used, so it survived. It probably spent all this time packed away, waiting for the right time to quilt it. 

The large print in the original has a design I believe to be cotton bolls. In the early 1990's I found a similar fabric and immediately bought 3 yards so I could get started on my reproduction. I hand quilted it with triple diagonal lines, appropriate to the time period the top was made. And easy to mark with 1/4" tape:

Close up of the original:

One more FUNNY part to this story. After it was done, my guild had a program with Liz Porter. We were making new quilts that were meant to look old. During the lunch break I showed her my top. She looked at it closely and said "You know, this brown fabric used to be purple.". The whole room broke out laughing--she didn't get it. My FAVORITE COLOR is purple! She showed us the seam allowances on the back--the large central fabric that looks like cotton bolls was definitely purple when it was new. So this quilt top really was meant to be mine.

Now I have to replicate it one more time---I have the perfect purple fabric just waiting for this next quilt.

The most valuable lesson I learned from this quilt? Appreciate what you have, not what you don't.

Let's quilt.

Barbara

Antique Quilts #2

 My most recent purchase. This one seems destined to be a Christmas display quilt each year: 

It is a terrific collection of old fabrics, I can study it for hours: 

The quilting design is hard to see but fun--large circles, perhaps marked with a dinner plate, then a small circle inside that, like saucer size: 

I love how they change direction for no apparent reason: 

The back: 

Let's quilt. 

Barbara

Houston--What I Bought-- Part 3

 My final post about International Quilt Festival 2021. This will show my purchases.

Having put myself on fabric restriction, I didn't look at or buy any fabric. The closets are full and begging for the "de-stash" process to begin. 

Instead I bought thread. So now I am on "thread restriction" too. Superior is my thread of choice. This isn't all of it: 

Always looking for more rulers/templates for ruler work, I bought these two. Now I am eager to try them out: 

And I bought a book full of good quilting ideas for pieced blocks. Deciding what to quilt is the most challenging part for most of us--this will help:

That would have been enough for this trip but then I saw an antique quilt I really liked. It has two things I love in antiques--flying geese and LOTS of fabrics. The dealers are lovely people, Carolyn and Don Springer, Quilts from Mulberry Lane

The tag from the dealer said it was a Mennonite quilt, made by Ada Wadell of Carlisle, PA. It is 72" x 78" and in excellent condition. A quick search for Ada Wadell or Waddell in PA hasn't been successful yet but I'll keep looking. I grew up in PA and took a Girl Scout trip to Lancaster County, PA that first introduced me to quilts and started my passion for them: 

Border quilting: 

 

The rest of the quilting is two concentric circles with a few small stitches in the center of each:

Sometimes the geese change direction for no apparent reason: 

Wonderful collection of old fabrics--she had a deep stash too, just like I do:

The back--three widths of this fabric, the middle one is 25.5" wide. The binding is the back turned over to the front:

                                                  

The perfect addition to my small antique collection. This just might be my Next Lifetime Quilt!

Let's quilt.

Barbara 

Flying Geese Quilts

For years, I have loved quilts with Flying Geese units. Here are a few that speak to me.

1. Pieces of the Past--Circa 1875, made 1995, replicating an antique top I own:

I do plan to make one more Pieces of the Past--Circa 1875 with purple reproduction fabrics, since I now know the browns in the antique top were originally purple.

2. 5 Easy Pieces, made 1995, as a much easier version than Pieces of the Past:

ANTIQUES THAT INSPIRE ME:

3. I would like to know more about this quilt, it is a photo I saved years ago online. Any information on this particular quilt is welcomed:

4. This was on Ebay, a common strippy type with great red sashing: 

5. Wild Goose Chase, also on Ebay, love the bright cheddar sashing:

Another Antique Top I own, bought from Cindy Rennels

What about you? Flying Geese--love them or hate them?

Let's quilt.

Barbara

A Few Antiques

While searching in the storage closet for an antique top to take with me on a teaching trip, I came upon one I had forgotten about and two that needed to be photographed.

The most recent purchase is this Flying Geese Strippy quilt top, bought from Cindy Rennels, of Cindy's Antique Quilts.:

She posted photos on Instagram and I bit--the fabrics are quite interesting and I am a fan of Flying Geese quilts. Entirely hand pieced. She sells at all the big shows, and will be at Paducah later this month, check out her booth.

The next is a quilt top I forgot I bought--the tag on it says $10 so I am guessing this String Quilt came from an antique shop. It is also entirely hand pieced, a bit primitive, even humble, but someone put a lot of time into it many years ago:

The backdrop is my Lifetime quilt, still covering the design wall

I enjoy studying all the different fabrics and researching their approximate age.

This third top I bought in 2015 from Julia Hodenius-Kelly of Pique'. She also sells at the big shows and always has interesting quilts, usually quite old and often has wonderful old fabrics which I don't buy buy admire--how did they survive all these years? I believe this one came from Pennsylvania as did I. I began reproducing it and need to get back to it. It, too, is entirely hand pieced:

Several of the fabrics are "patched"

Pretty cool fabrics

On an edge, I think she was running low on fabrics

Far right is the "border"--a half row--perhaps she got tired and just stopped

You never know what you'll find in my closets. Oh, here was the one I was searching for and found:

I have written about this quilt top and its' interesting story before--check it out here.

Let's quilt!

Barbara

I Love Flying Geese

Still on the hunt for my Next Lifetime Quilt, I am considering Flying Geese--I really love that shape.

NEQM by Mary Kelleher

 This one is unusual in that there are no bars separating the rows of geese. I do love that there are light geese and dark geese flying all together, and a wide variety of "sky" fabrics, both light and dark.

Here is one with the bars:

From Ebay

And another antique, seen on Martha Gray's blog, Q is for Quilts, and used with her permission:

A pattern that uses lots of geese is Wild Goose Chase. This would take some planning as a Leader/Ender quilt but it would work:

From Ebay

Flying Geese are also the Star Points units used in Sawtooth Stars:

Civil War Homefront from The Blue and The Gray by Etherington and Tesene

But since I made a bunch of Sawtooth Stars during Barbara Brackman's Stars in a Time Warp year-long project, I may be over that:

The biggest problem for me in using Flying Geese as a Leader/Ender project is that I like to make four geese at once, I even have a tutorial above that shows how I do it and how I oversize and custom cut.

I want to use the 2" strips I have leftover from the First Lifetime Quilt. I could do that if I was willing to make Flying Geese from one rectangle and two squares. I tried it just to see and I am just not a fan of this method. But it would work:

So, still on the hunt for the pattern I want to invest the next few years to.

Thoughts, kind friends? Do you love Flying Geese?

Let's quilt,

Barbara