Quilt Stories

[Walrus Whisperer]

My first quilt that I made was embarassing. It was very simple in that it was an easy 9 patch with standard sashing. The colors were greens and blacks, the sashing was a plain light green. Being rather poor at the time I used a thrift store cotton blanket for the batting. I liked it a lot. It wasn't very big, lap throw size. But the problem was that that thick cotton blanket made it stiff, especially after quilting it together. I washed it. I washed it again. If anything, it made it stiffer. It was like trying to wrap up in a piece of cardboard! I finally ended up using it to fold over the back of the easy chair because it was almost unuseable. My sister visited a couple years later and saw it and commented on it. I GAVE it to her. She STILL has it after almost 20 years on her sofa and the poor thing can still stand up in a corner by itself.


I dont have a picture of it, my sister thinks its the most precious thing she owns so I won't disillusion her by asking her to take a pic of it for me.

If anyone has any of their own, please feel free to add your story.

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

A Womans Secret.

I have two utility quilts I finished. I found the tops in a thrift store, paid 12$ for the both of them. They were obviuosly made by the same person-same fabrics and both were of bow tie blocks. One had larger blocks and the other had smaller blocks.

Backed them with some 2$ a yard cat fabric I had found at wallys.
I finished them by quilting them by machine, I was trying to learn how to do it that way, fighting my hands and a non cooperative machine and not understanding how one did this machine quilting thing. Used some cheap poly batting that probably could have been thinner, but hey! I was learning! Bound them with that poly quilt binding you see in the fabric section. Since I just wanted to use them as bed quilts, I figured that however they came out as long as they didn't shred in the wash, I was ahead and had something beautiful I could look at.

Some of those blocks have the most beautiful fabric in them, I look at them and pet them. Sometimes I put them over the couch for a cover and spend a few minutes wondering about the mystery behind who made these tops. When I got married, I would put them on the bed and my husband would look and wonder why his wife would just look at the fabrics and finger one or more and ooh and ahh over some.

I told him a story I had made up about the two quilts. Each one has a couple or so blocks made from a fabric with horses on it. One horse block on each quilt has a horses behind on it. Strangely, I noticed that each of those horses rear blocks is in the center of the quilt top. I decided that, being a rather silent person myself that the person who made those quilt tops was making a comment on something in her environment (most likely her husband) with those blocks. It was something that I would do-something that no one would ever notice unless they, too, understood the silent community of womanhood. So, I finished her quilts she was unable to finish and wonder who she was. Wonder what she went through. And thank her for my beautiful quilts, that even though they are well used, they are loved by another who understands.

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

Evelyn, Banana Bread, Scotties and Quilts

Evelyn, Banana Bread, Scotties and Quilts
The excerpt is from:
http://70.97.123.22/vb/showthread.php?t=122180

"Excerpt:This recipe was given to me by my best friend who died in 2001. She lived up the street from me and her little Scotty dragged her over to me one day while I was working in the flowers along my driveway. Evelyn was a little old lady who grew up Mennonite. I am proud to say that she is responsible for my passion: quilting. She was a docent at the Rocky Mountain Quilt museum, and made hundreds of quilts over her lifetime. Her life of service to others, and her faith, despite crippling arthritis in her hands, feet and back changed my life forever. Evelyn’s family was very gracious in allowing me to have her little Scotty, I am honored to now own the little dog that started it all, Baby."

To continue the story of Evelyn, I have to add that until the time of my life when I met Evelyn, I had never really had a passion in my life. She was present when I made my first quilt in my first post above and encouraged me greatly. There is just something about quilting that I never found in all the other things I have tried my hand at. Knitting-I'm a TIGHT knitter and can't seem to loosen it up-its hard for me so I dropped that. Crocheting-I'm a loose crocheter, but I kept with it for years until the hands just don't allow it anymore. I made doilies, sofa throws, tableclothes. They were beautiful but it was still lacking something.
I airbrushed, even had two of my paintings juried into art shows. This was getting a lot closer. The mere fact of getting my work juried into an art show meant to me that I COULD touch anothers heart with what I was seeing in my head that I put onto that paper.

The fact that a "painting" in one of those shows (I use the term "painting" loosely here) that was in fact "finger painting" on blank newspaper and wasn't even framed could win best in show, first place and all the ribbons told me that people ooh and ahh over what they THINK they are supposed to ooh and ahh over and has NO relationship to something so intensely quietly beatiful that you just stand there awed. One of my paintings that were in the art show was given to a friend who was a psychologist who hung it in his office. He told me that he got more stuff out of his patients when he put that up than he had ever had before. What a compliment!That was an ooh and ahh that I can relate to.

So, I started quilting. Never looked back....That was it.
Evelyn and I would sit on her front porch and swing and pet fabric or quietly sew on our projects. We always would sit out to view the 4th of July fireworks that were right over our heads in Golden. We would either sit in lawn chairs behind my trailer or sit on her porch for the viewing. One year shortly before full dark, some kids started a fire from fireworks in the weeds on the small cliff her trailer was against- we raced around in the near dark, bumping into each other and trying to find the end of the hose, Evelyn finally turned it on and we were showered, but we got the fire out. One very hot summer day, I called her up and said "come down and have some iced tea by the pool!". I knew she would be mystified by the pool part-there was no pool in the trailer park and no room for one in our little yards. She came right down and we laughed ourselves silly when she discovered I had my grandsons baby pool set up in the postage stamp patio with glasses of iced tea sweating in the August heat and waiting for us to drink.

She told me secrets that will never be told to any other living person on this earth. We went to the quilt magazine place we could see from our trailers-it was right across the road from the trailer park, they had new quilts up every month. She volunteered at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, I was regaled with her stories of the museum goings on. You wouldn't think a humble art like quilting would cause such political manuevering as what went on there, but it did. The people tried to one up each other and plotted against each other, but Evelyn just went because she loved quilts.

I still miss her, she was the best friend I ever had. Baby died a couple years ago, we were delighted to have given her last days something other than being tied to a clothesline by Evelyns kids, who didn't understand. I made a memorial quilt when Evelyn died, it has everything in there that we did and shared, the fireworks at Heritage Square and the School of Mines M on the mountain, the hose that squirted us, her yard that was so peaceful with the rustling cottonwood leaves, Baby's collar tag, the plants in her little garden, even a pool of lovely water that we once drank iced tea by. the middle fabric was a piece she had given me long ago that I could never bring myself to cut into, but I could for her. The big cottonwood leaves I found on some outdoor fabric and were perfect. The backing was some fabric that she was enamored with, some might remember it. It was a whole series of music fabric and was wonderfully soft to the hand, Evelyn bought yards of it and gave me some. Her memorial quilt was juried into the Western Heritage quilt show here in Billings a few years ago, I sent it to her daughter after Baby died. Thats the 2nd pic. The first is the one I made for Evelyn 2 years before she died -thats her in the pic holding it up.

Heres her recipe:

Evelyn’s Banana Bread
5 large bananas
4 eggs, well beaten
1 cup melted butter
(may use oil instead of butter, but it just doesn’t taste the same)
2 cups sugar
3 ½ cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup broken walnuts(optional)
Mash and beat bananas to a liquidy state.
Add the eggs, butter, and sugar in that order, beating well between each.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt and blend into batter. Stir in nuts(if wanted)
Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then at 300 degrees for 60 to 70 minutes. This time needs to be adjusted for your oven and moisture level of the batter-sometimes I’ve had to bake it (at the 300 temp)for 90 minutes and sometimes only the 60 minutes. The toothpick test will have to be used to see when the interior of the loaves are done.
You have some leeway in how many bananas you can use, I have put 6 LARGE ones in with no ill effect. I dont buy small bananas so use them at your discretion as to how many.

 

[briches]

WW,

Wow! What a beautiful testimony to your friendship with Evelyn! Amazing quilt! I love seeing them!

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

Our Sister of the Cats

Our Sister of the Cats
I have two sisters. One has a sensible amout of pets, the other? Well, lets just say the fluctuating number of her cats and dogs is a secret she will never tell any of us. Don't get me wrong, we all like cats. A lot. But this sister carries it to a fine art!

When I finally decided I was getting pretting good at machine quilting (like the hand quilting of the quilt sandwich, only with a sewing machine) I was going to make a cat quilt for my sister. She wanted blue and purple and green so I went and got the fabrics I thought would be okay and started hunting up pictures of cats. I had printed pictures of every kind and sort of cat and in every conceivable postion that cats are prone to assume. They were all over the house! I decided that I would have a certain size block and so many blocks for the whole thing. Solid purple for the block, the blue print for the cats, and a solid green for the sashing.

After a couple months of machine appliquing cats onto blocks every single night and most of my weekends I finally had 42 cat blocks all done. I learned a LOT about sewing machines in this process-a piece of lint the size of a molecule will jam your sewing up so bad that you just want to heave it out the window. And then you find it and everything sews along well for a few hours. Now came the hard part. The sashing.

No matter what I did, that plain green was, well, PLAIN. I tried several small corner blocks until I saw a quilt that featured a small star done in a clever way in the corners between each block. That was it. The color choices I made were a lavender solid and a medium yellow for the star points that did very pleasing things to all that blue and purple.

Those stars took forever to do. No matter how much I measured and carefully cut, they would NOT come out right unless I did each one, one at a time until I got a strip together. then came the day I had the rows all together and all that was left was sewing them together. My God, it was stunning. I quickly put a couple or three borders on, got it laid out and pinned for the quilting with batting and backing. I was so thrilled with it that I cannot remember what I used for the backing. :shrug:

Finally! The quilting! The FUN part! That also took forever, that monster was heavy and it was hard to shove it around under the needle. I choose a fairly regular stipple to do within each block after sewing all around each in the ditch to stabilize the whole quilt before hitting the gas for the main quilting. There were some blocks that leant themselves to a fancier freehand quilting. Quilted in eyes and whiskers and body part lines to make the attitude of each cat better. The cat in the block just above the mouse was lying down so I quilted some brown branches and green leaves so he would appear to be under a bush. One was echo quilted. But what to do in the sashing?

I dreamed that design one night. The next morning I spent a little while drawing it so I could sew it in one go for each long green sashing piece. It was perfect. (you can kinda see it in the corner closeup pic-it was a very stylized egyptian looking two mouse facing opposite directions design) My sister of the Cats also is a big fan of anything egyptian.

Well, the monster was almost done. It spent its days and nights in a heap on the living room floor except for whatever place I was quilting at sitting up on the sewing machine bed.

The Grandkids came to visit.

They left.

DISASTER! I finished a place I was working on and heaved up some more quilt to get to another place and discovered ONE OF THE GRANDKIDS HAD LOST A PEN IN ALL THOSE FABRIC FOLDS. GAH! The entire contents of that pen had been sucked out by the fabric and a HUGE INK BLOT was now in this beautiful quilt that I had been working on so hard for MONTHS. GAH! I was so mad, I didn't touch it for a week. Then I got busy. Decided that IF I found the perfect piece of fabric I could make a "thought" ballon like they do in the comics for the unfortunate cat that was so unlucky to have the recipient of the ink. I searched my entire stash. Twice. Even at this time so many years ago that was a massive undertaking. 20 paper boxes full. I finally decided on something I had found at a yard sale-was very asian looking with peacock-like birds about the right size strewn about on it at intervals far enough apart to make a good "thought" balloon. (you can see it in the cat that is 4 up and 3 over from the right side of the picture)

I think one of my proudest moments was when I brought it to my quilt guild on meeting night. They always had the tallest ladies hold up the quilts for the show and tell portion of the meeting and they had to be extra tall for mine. They were unfolding it and I could here them saying "wow" while they were getting it ready to hold up. Finally it was unfurled for all to see. There was absolute dead silence for a few heatbeats until everyone just collectively inhaled and said "WOW". I KNEW I had done good. That was the best tribute I could have ever had for anything I had ever done, that silent moment of awe.

The pics won't load-I'll have to do it tomorrow.....

 

[Sojourner]

WW, I appreciated your observation about "the silent community of womanhood." It brought to mind something I read about quilting and women -- that quilting was a woman's way to sing the blues, like jazz is to a musician. I often think of that when I see old quilts, especially those stitched during the Great Depression.

 

[fruit loop]

MY MOTHER PIECED QUILTS

they were just meant as covers
in winters
as weapons
against pounding january winds

but it was just that every morning I awoke to these
october ripened canvases
passed my hand across their cloth faces
and began to wonder how you pieced
all these together
these strips of gentle communion cotton and flannel
nightgowns
wedding organdies
dime store velvets

how you shaped patterns square and oblong and round
positioned
balanced
then cemented them
with your thread
a steel needle
a thimble

how the thread darted in and out
galloping along the frayed edges, tucking them in
as you did us at night
oh how you stretched and turned and re-arranged
your michigan spring faded curtain pieces
my father's santa fe work shirt
the summer denims, the tweed of fall

in the evening you sat at your canvas
---our cracked linoleum floor -the drawing board
me lounging on your arm
and you staking out the plan;
whether to put the lilac purple of easter- against the red
plaid of winter-going-
into-spring
whether to mix a yellow with blue and white and paint the
corpus christi noon when my father held your hand
whether to shape a five-point star from the
somber black silk you wore to grandmother's funeral].

You were the river current
carrying the roaring notes
forming them into pictures of a little boy reclining
a swallow flying
You were the caravan master at the reins
driving your thread needle artillery across the mosaic
cloth bridges
delivering yourself in separate testimonies

oh mother you plunged me sobbing and, laughing
into our past
into the river crossing at five
into the spinach fields
into the plainview cotton rows
into tuberculosis wards
into braids and muslin dresses
sewn hard and taut to withstand the thrashings of
twenty-five years

stretched out they lay
armed/ready/shouting/celebrating

knotted with love
the quilts sing on



~ Teresa Elaloma Acosta

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

Finally! Purple cat quilt Pics!

Finally! I can post the Pics now! Dennis/Jon fixed the server problem.

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

Fruit Loop, what a nice piece!

 

[mzkitty]

Wow, just beautiful quilts and stories, ladies!!

 

[Walrus Whisperer]

Plesiosaurus, Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex, Oh My!

About the second or third quilt I made was for my grandson, he was maybe 3 then. I used what is called a cheater cloth, just something that was sized for a child or a lap throw with a design printed on it already. This was going to be a dinosaur quilt for a little boy who loved dinosaurs.

I was determined to hand quilt it this time. It was pretty easy to make, I just pinned it together with the batting and backer fabric (which was more dinosaurs, just differant from the front), folded some of the backer fabric over to the front so I wouldn't have raveling edges while I worked on it.

This is where I found that my fingers just didn't work very well anymore, but I persisted. Around each biggish dinosaur I went and did some internal body quilting, too, so they looked pretty good. By the time I had the hand quilting part done I had given up on hand quilting in between the dinosaurs and just did that part on the machine. I wondered what I could do to make it more special and thought of just the right thing for a little boy, who by now had a sister and was 4 years old. (I never said I was fast )

I decided that a "secret pocket" would be just the thing. Something special that he could have that would just be between us two. There was one spot where there wasn't a dinosaur near an edge near a corner that was just right for it. It was really hard for me to figure out HOW to get that pocket in it and do the binding, too. I finally did it somehow and had snaps so it could close, too, and many years later I have no idea what exactly I did, but little sister never found out so I know it was good. His mom knew it was there so she could take out the rocks and stuff he would hide in there before washing it.

Little did I know that a couple years later his life would turn into a living hell where he chose to leave it at my house, "because HE would take it away from me". Lets just say that my daughter had made a very bad choice and the poor little guy ended up in the clutches of a man she said was the father and a colluding social services female.

My sister and I spent our life savings on rescueing him from this person and I was finally given custody after a blood test said he couldn't possibly be the father. It left him damaged. It left me damaged. How could a social services AND the guardian ad litem collude despite being shown BRUISES photographed by the police department? I taped him silently sobbing while I was bringing him "home" after a weekend visit and begging me to not bring him back there. Admitted spanking strictly prohibited by the SS in court? And they STILL insisted it was all hunky dory. You have no idea of the awful things that poor kid endured. And the anger I still have towards them.

The worst was near the end when I was called up by the supposed father and told that I needed to come get this little brat because he couldn't take it anymore. (Two powerful women were too much for him, I guess) I called our lawyer, he said Git, and I went-It was a cold December day, the 18th. I got there in record time to find my little grandson standing on their porch. No coat. His clothes and toys and things in two big garbage bags next to him. They were gone. Just left him there in the cold. Like a bag of trash.

Two weeks later, at the end, I had him and he was SAFE. My sister had already adopted his sister and finally decided she was going to adopt him, too, a few months after we had got him away from the monster. He had nightmares for years, but he always had his dinosaur quilt on his bed and slept with his hand in the pocket.

He will be entering the Navy in April, just after his birthday this year. I'm so proud I could burst. He will always be damaged from what that man did to him, but despite it all, he survived.

No pictures of this one. Its just a tattered patched thing now, but he still has it.

 

[thompson]

WW, I admire you very much for doing what you did for your grandson! Your quilts are beautiful, but your heart is even moreso.