BEDDING — Inside the Home

Patch Quilt

If Grandma Could Quilt Today

With a treadle machine and foot power, cardboard templates, and many hours at the quilt frame, my Grandma perfected her talent of quilting.  Each colorful bed quilt and creative and unique baby quilt sewed by her skilled hands without the modern day tools to today's quilters. I often wonder what Grandma would think if she would be alive to quilt today?

Grandma told me stories about she learned to quilt by hand from her great aunt, since her mother had died when she only age 13.  During those days, to quilt was a necessity for a young girl. Since my Grandma was the oldest child, the making of a quilt to keep the younger ones warm on those cold Pennsylvania winter nights was not a craft but survival.

Once married, an electric machine brought speed to the quilt process.  Now Grandma learned to save even more time when constructing a block and learned to sew using the assembly line process.  I remember her telling me how she so often, while trying to save thread, while chaining triangles, and butting the pairs of patches against each other, would overlap them. Her best friend became her stitch ripper!  If Grandma would be here today, I would love to show her how to sew half square triangles.  Not only could Grandma make triangles in half the time, but they would never overlap.

Grandma's templates were always unique.  Some were copied from the wrapping of her batting, others from her friends and fellow quilters, but the common component of all the templates were that they were cut by scissors from any type of cardboard Grandma could find.  Her favorite quilt pattern, the Double Wedding Ring, was cut out from a discarded Tootsie Roll box.  The interesting designs of each cardboard quilt template were not accurate when tracing or sewing.  Though Grandma kept her sewing scissors extremely sharp and they were only used to cut quilt material, I can only imagine whether she would embrace the rotary cutter and ruler methods of today or lean towards the plastic templates and her trusty scissors to construct her quilt blocks.  The rotary cutter has replaced the tedious one patch at-a-time cutting process, which helps to mass produce commonly used shapes in a quilt.  Besides speed this method is highly accurate.  Could Grandma have made the change to the modern world of today and quilt with the tools of today's quilters?

Today the treadle machine sits idly in my living room, a beautiful reminder of days gone by. Those cardboard quilt pieces are securely and lovingly tucked away, yet one part of Grandma is here today.  The soothing rhythm of hand quilting, which takes layers of material and with tiny stitches made by hand, creates a quilt, an heirloom for posterity.

Grandma, thank you for sharing your love of quilting.    I wonder what you would say about the tools of the quilters today, if I would have the opportunity to share them with you.   One thing is for certain, I know you would be pleased to see this granddaughter has learned the art and skill of the quilter.

Time to quilt!

 

 

About the Author

Don't have the time to create your own masterpiece, come and choose one of our handmade children's quilts, a lasting keepsake, a unique birthday gift, or Christening gift, for that special "little one."

Visit my website:  www.uniquebabyquiltboutique.com and chose of one unique handmade children's quilt from my collection for your child's birthday or other special event.

Sharon Camp has been quilting for over 30 years.

 

I want to learn how to make American style patch work quilts.?

I'm going to get some instruction books off Amazon, but I just wondered if there were any quilters out there who wanted to explain why they took it up and how they get inspiration for new quilts? I'm 23 and English and I don't have anyone to teach me or tell about it.

I'm 39 and I've been quilting for about 4 years. It's something I've always wanted to learn (I've been a fabric addict since birth), and I finally just bit the bullet and took a class. For me, the class was absolutely worth the money because I could see what was happening and ask questions right away. We used a book called "Start Quilting with Alex Anderson." You can get it at Amazon for about $10 - it's just a thin book, but it teaches the basics. I machine piece and quilt - if you're interested in hand piecing and quilting, she has another book geared toward hand quilting. I also recommend "The Quilter's Ultimate Visual Guide" as a reference book. It doesn't have projects, but has the answer to every question you can think of. Quilt in a Day/Eleanor Burns is another good resource. She has dozens of books out and they have the most detailed, well illustrated instructions. Her book "Still Stripping After 25 Years" is a great choice because it ranges from the simplest beginner quilts to more complicated intermediate blocks. A little trick - take your softcover books to a copy center and have them cut the bindings off and put a spiral binding on for you. You can lay the books flat, or fold them back to the page you need.

Check out the HGTV website for videos of the show Simply Quilts. Also look at QNNTV for more videos.

As for inspiration - it comes from everywhere. The internet is fantastic - just google "quilt" and click "Images" to see thousands of photos of quilts. Search for "quilt" in any of the online photo sites, like Webshots, Photobucket, Flickster, and dozens of others. There are many magazines out there and several do have international subscription options. One of my favorites is Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting. There's a lot of wonderful free stuff available on their website.

Look into the Yahoo Groups - there are many quilting groups that have members from England, Australia, Scotland, and all over the world.

Some quilters love the process but are a little intimidated by choosing fabrics. I have a file of magazine advertisements that have interesting color combinations. Professionals designed these, and I figure they know more about color theory than I ever will. Other quilters will find a print fabric and match the other fabrics to the colors in the print. Sometimes they don't even use the print in the finished quilt - it's just an inspiration piece.

Cottage Collection Liberty Patch Quilt

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm and is filed under bedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.