It only took 30+ years....
08-20-2015, 10:26 AM
#33
Power Poster
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Lowell, MA
Posts: 14,083
Your quilt is beautiful and well worth the waiting and time to finish it. The important thing is that you did finish it and I hope you documented the quilt's history into the label. I believe that sometimes fabric, as well as quilts, need to age like fine wine before becoming a quilt. It took nearly 10 years to finish the quilt I made for our 25th wedding anniversary for my DH who picked out the fabric and the pattern (never again will I do a block with so many bias edges, as I cursed that quilt many, many times, especially when it came to the pieced border I had planned, but after ripping it out for 2 days, set it aside and then put a plain black border on the quilt with a wide cable on the border.) All things in good time.
08-20-2015, 10:35 AM
#34
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Desert Hot Springs, CA
Posts: 304
Your story beats mine! I started my first quilt in Texas and must have bought bolts of material. A very difficult pattern and the material was chintz. I made drapes to match and started on the quilt. My husband became ill and subsequently died. I decided to leave and "go on the road". I bought an RV and sold my house (left the drapes) and had a few things shipped to a storage shed in California. I wandered around and found a charming fellow traveler and we married. We bought a small home and I finally (10 years after starting) finished the quilt. My husband didn't like it so I gave it to a neighbor. But I got hooked on quilting and have made many quilts since. I visit my quilt occasionally at the neighbor's house!
08-20-2015, 04:56 PM
#38
Super Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Tallmadge, OH
Posts: 5,120
Started out in the Summer of 1984after my divorce became final & I’d met Derwin - a project to keep myselfbusy, that didn’t cost anything, & that I could sit on the floor and workon. Template squares hand drawn w/ruler & scissor cut from cereal boxcardboard. Individual pieces tracedaround the templates & scissor cut. Center hand pieced with single thread & running stitch in 1984,early ’85. Re-married; moved fromSacramento, CA to Barstow, CA in May, 1985 – center hung on a hanger packedaway in back of a closet. Settled intolife w/one D of mine, a D & S of his, & we had 2 more sons. Somewhere in there bought the black for simplesingle borders & back according to pattern when working on youngest 2 boys2[SUP]nd[/SUP] of matching bunk bed quilts (1[SUP]st[/SUP] in 1987 & 2[SUP]nd[/SUP]between 1990-’95). Decided 80” squarenot big enough, began researching ideas for increasing size.
Moved to Mohave Valley, AZ in 1997,joined the Colorado River Quilters Guild & showed the center (which hadbeen stored since 1985). By Fall, 1999 ready to proceed - added black pipingaround “medallion” center, then 7” muslin inner border, 2” red - 2[SUP]nd[/SUP]inner border, and finished w/7” black outside border – all w/mitered corners. In July, 2000 found black & whitecheckered backing fabric in quilt shop in Flagstaff while on an NAU outingw/son. Decided to add 10” black bordersto backing square for sizing & interest. Laid out on floor & hand basted the layerstogether (using the inexpensive polyester type batting found in plastic bags atJoanne’s fabrics…) and basted the quilt onto the hand quilting frame poles& it then hung in our hall gallery “as is” until I took it down in 2009. By this time I was beginning to teach myselfmachine quilting having started on my little White “Jeans” Machine, graduatingto a brother 1600 on a 6’-10’ frame and graduating up to a Tin Lizzie Eighteenon a 10’ frame, but being a die hard old fashioned hand quilter, really didwant to finish this one by hand considering it had been done all by hand sofar. It waited while I learned &practiced more machine stuff – both piecing & long-arm quilting. Set up the frame & did the hand quilting overthe Winter of 2009-10 after I had decided how I wanted to quilt the center& had settled on the Celtic Knot pattern (and drawn it to size to fit themuslin border & corners). By then wedecided to think of it as our 25[SUP]th[/SUP] Anniversary quilt. After completing the main body of quilting& the white inner border I again showed it at the guild and afterexplaining my idea to straight line quilt (like piano keys) went along w/theirrecommendations of cross-hatching the red-black borders. Crosshatched all 4 sides of the red/blackborders & really didn’t like the finished look so decided to re-stitch tomy original idea of straight lines. Derwin died May, 2011 – a couple weeks after our 26[SUP]th[/SUP]. It again sat – but this time folded up in aglass fronted cupboard along w/a few other hand stitching projects as I had toreturn to teaching full-time until I could pull RR retirement at age 60. Moved from AZ back to El Dorado Hills, CA inSept. 2013. Slowly began to get backinto my quilting after the first year or so of settling in to a new chapter inmy life and decided it would be a good fit in the living room of thathome. Had a couple opportunities to takea hand project out of state for family stuff so it went & actually gotworked on while I was out of my studio & finally finished.
I know in my perfectionist, oldschool quilting head, all the things I have done wrong (or - not that they werewrong, but could have been done much better and/or differently) with this quiltas I have learned new ways & sometimes smarter ways to do things, etc… overthe past 30 years. But it is mine, forme, Bob truly loves & appreciates having it in his living room, andactually I am quite pleased with how it has come out J
Moved to Mohave Valley, AZ in 1997,joined the Colorado River Quilters Guild & showed the center (which hadbeen stored since 1985). By Fall, 1999 ready to proceed - added black pipingaround “medallion” center, then 7” muslin inner border, 2” red - 2[SUP]nd[/SUP]inner border, and finished w/7” black outside border – all w/mitered corners. In July, 2000 found black & whitecheckered backing fabric in quilt shop in Flagstaff while on an NAU outingw/son. Decided to add 10” black bordersto backing square for sizing & interest. Laid out on floor & hand basted the layerstogether (using the inexpensive polyester type batting found in plastic bags atJoanne’s fabrics…) and basted the quilt onto the hand quilting frame poles& it then hung in our hall gallery “as is” until I took it down in 2009. By this time I was beginning to teach myselfmachine quilting having started on my little White “Jeans” Machine, graduatingto a brother 1600 on a 6’-10’ frame and graduating up to a Tin Lizzie Eighteenon a 10’ frame, but being a die hard old fashioned hand quilter, really didwant to finish this one by hand considering it had been done all by hand sofar. It waited while I learned &practiced more machine stuff – both piecing & long-arm quilting. Set up the frame & did the hand quilting overthe Winter of 2009-10 after I had decided how I wanted to quilt the center& had settled on the Celtic Knot pattern (and drawn it to size to fit themuslin border & corners). By then wedecided to think of it as our 25[SUP]th[/SUP] Anniversary quilt. After completing the main body of quilting& the white inner border I again showed it at the guild and afterexplaining my idea to straight line quilt (like piano keys) went along w/theirrecommendations of cross-hatching the red-black borders. Crosshatched all 4 sides of the red/blackborders & really didn’t like the finished look so decided to re-stitch tomy original idea of straight lines. Derwin died May, 2011 – a couple weeks after our 26[SUP]th[/SUP]. It again sat – but this time folded up in aglass fronted cupboard along w/a few other hand stitching projects as I had toreturn to teaching full-time until I could pull RR retirement at age 60. Moved from AZ back to El Dorado Hills, CA inSept. 2013. Slowly began to get backinto my quilting after the first year or so of settling in to a new chapter inmy life and decided it would be a good fit in the living room of thathome. Had a couple opportunities to takea hand project out of state for family stuff so it went & actually gotworked on while I was out of my studio & finally finished.
I know in my perfectionist, oldschool quilting head, all the things I have done wrong (or - not that they werewrong, but could have been done much better and/or differently) with this quiltas I have learned new ways & sometimes smarter ways to do things, etc… overthe past 30 years. But it is mine, forme, Bob truly loves & appreciates having it in his living room, andactually I am quite pleased with how it has come out J
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