Dust Off a Quilt Book

I have many old quilting books on my shelves. This is the first quilt book I ever bought back in 1974. I paid $3 for it. At least that is the price printed on the top right corner of the front cover. As I read through it, I had all sorts of ideas, but life and babies took my time and my ideas simmered in the background for a few decades. My first 2 quilts were hand quilted. Then I tied lots before learning how to quilt by machine.

When I first moved into this old farmhouse nearly 49 years ago, I found a ratty old quilt under the mattress of our cast iron 4 poster bed. It was a Double Irish Chain or maybe a Triple Irish Chain. Don't remember exactly, except that this book identified it as an Irish Chain pattern. It was very scrappy and very tattered. Maybe that is why it ended up on top of the springs under the old mattress. They did that in those days.

                                                                    Somehow it must have found its way out to the barn to be used to cover a sick cow and then disappeared along with a couple of other similar old quilts like a hand pieced and hand quilted Radiant Star and a Double Nine Patch. Two of them were made by my husband's grandmother and the other by a neighbour. I have pictures of some of his grandmother's quilts that his 91-year-old mother has tucked away for "good". One of these days I will get 12-year old Ava to help reproduce a couple of her great-great-grandmother's quilts.

Originally published 1949. This addition published 1959 when I was 7

Everything you ever needed to know about quilting is in this book. Until someone invented rotary cutters and mats and GO cutters. I was self-taught for the first 25 years of my quilting journey.
This book gave me insights on how to launder old quilts and I did them one by one in the bathtub, rolled them in towels and laid them out on the grass in the shade.

Recently I completed a Double Irish Chain quilt for my daughter. It finishes at 106 inches and hangs off the end of their bed. I did not especially follow a pattern. Just followed the picture.  So this week I made a mini. My first mini quilt. I did follow a pattern. Sort of.

I pulled up a block on EQ7 (they did not have that back then either) and figured it out.  Part of my inspiration was this pile of strings trimmed off my BTCT blocks.

 I ended up cutting a few 1-inch squares of colours and a few 2-inch squares and a few 1x2 inch strips and sewed them all together. That all sounds a lot easier than it was.

 I found these very modern tiny wonder clips (they did not have them back then either) necessary to hold all those tiny pieces together so I could feed them through the machine. Now, I have made an incredible number of 4 1/2 inch blocks for both of my Dear Jane quilts, mostly by foundation piecing, but this has me questioning my sanity.
And people hand piece these things together??

 I cannot believe people make these miniatures on purpose for fun. This was agony for my poor hands. I tried. I really did try to hand quilt with Perle cotton. You know - big stitch. Well, I got about 10 stitches in and gave up. I tried a smaller needle. But nope. It was not going to work for me. At least not on this thing. So, I brought the backing around to the front and machine stitched it down. I almost did it in the light gray thread I was sewing with, but managed to find a dark blue. Then, I simply machine quilted through all the tiny half inch blue squares and call it done.

Six-year-old Devan has claimed it for her Imagination Lego Creation. She might use it as a carpet. 

This mini finishes at a somewhat 8 1/2 inches. 

blessings,

Chris

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