Hand Quilted Gems

Yesterday we attended the 41st annual Quilting Workshop sponsored by Zion Mennonite Church in Hubbard, Oregon.  It was my first time visiting this quilt show, and it's already on my calendar for next year!  Along with the displays of approximately 100 antique, vintage and contemporary quilts, there were demonstrations of needle turn applique, hand quilting on an old fashioned frame, making woven star ornaments, piecing, etc.  The quilter's group meets at the church every Thursday, and according to the program provided, had already been meeting for about 70 years at the time the first annual Quilting Workshop was held in 1973!  These ladies share their knowledge as a service to others and there is no admission charge to attend the annual workshop and quilt show, however any donations received are designated for a particular mission project each year.  This year's donations will be sent to the Senior Center in El Torno, Bolivia.    I came away from the show wishing it were not an hour-plus drive each way, as this is exactly the kind of group I would dearly love to join and learn from. 

So different from most of the quilt shows I've attended, here nearly all the quilts on display are hand quilted!  Some of the older ones were both tied and hand quilted.  One of the more contemporary quilts I noticed was machine quilted in the center, however the plain outer borders were expertly hand quilted, the maker evidently choosing to feature her hand stitching where it would have the most impact.

We came away with approximately 200 photos, and this post and probably the next will feature a few of our favorites.  I attempted to highlight some of the wonderful quilting motifs, and the especially fine and even stitching found on many of the examples.  So, without further ado:

 This quilt, possibly my very favorite in the show, was labeled "Orange and Teal Summer Quilt."  According to the card it was made in the early 1900s and resided in a trunk on the family farm in Ohio for nearly 90 years. 

 This quilt labeled "Zigzag Winter Quilt" was also created in the early 1900s and stored in the same trunk as the first quilt above.  Both appeared to be in excellent condition.

 Embroidered on the central block of this beauty are the words "from Grandmother" and "1917."
 

This huge hexie quilt was labeled "Grandmother's Flower Garden" and dated 1900s.

This gorgeous 1930s Grandmother's Flower Garden stole my heart with it's sunshine yellow border.  If I ever come under the hexie spell, this is the one I'll model mine after!

This 1930s quilt titled "Dahlia" has amazingly vibrant colors for its age.  This was one example of the quilt being both tied and hand quilted.  It has great loft, like a modern comforter. 

 

 A 1930s Sunbonnet Sue, in wonderful condition.
 

A 1940s embroidered flower basket quilt. 

Basket and quilting detail.

There were several outstanding examples of the Lone Star pattern.  Here is one, with exquisite hand quilting.  Many of the large quilts were displayed folded so we were unable to photograph the entire quilt.

Some of the antique and vintage household items also on display. 

Another very striking Radiant Star quilt, completed in 2012. 

 Gorgeous quilting motifs and stitching.

The label attached to this beauty indicates it was purchased at the Brownsville General Store in the 1980s as a kit.   Detail of the applique in the photo below.

Next post will feature some of the many embroidered quilts in the show, as well as more applique and pieced items.  It is obvious from viewing these quilts that they have been treasured by their makers and those who have inherited them, they are all in excellent condition.  If you love traditional quilts and hand quilting, this is a not-to-be-missed event!

Valentine's Day Eye Candy

As promised, today is show-and-tell of a portion of the crazy quilts I saw during my visit to the local historical society museum last Saturday.  To see my earlier post showing the pieced and appliqued quilts, click here.

This little museum had many crazy quilts on display and I only photographed a few.  The first one, shown in the next several photographs, was my favorite, for the many gorgeous fabrics, stitchery, and overall quality of workwomanship.  Without further ado:

 Note the prairie point edging!

Closeup of what appears to be a child's block.  So sweet.  Also, note the tree trunk embroidery that straddles the edges of two pieces. 

 

 Lots of exquisite embroidery and fabrics.

 I loved the fabric featured in the above photo!  It appears in several other places in the quilt, in smaller patches.

The second quilt appears to be a friendship quilt, and is made up of everyday fabrics, more rustic in appearance than the first quilt shown above, but also containing some beautifully embroidered patches.  The side of the quilt facing me had dates of 1902,1904 and 1909 on the visible patches.

 I wondered about the doily placed rather haphazardly atop the quilt, but the reason became more apparent in the photo below.  Closer examination of the quilt indicated that although the blocks themselves were seamed together before embroidery, at least some of the pieces within the blocks appear to have only been held together with the fancy stitches, undoubtedly contributing to the overall fragile condition.

 

 A utility quilt.  Note the large binding on either side.

 Another utility quilt.

A friendship quilt, bound with heavy buttonhole stitches.

On the homefront, this has been a week of utility stitching after Monday's fun get-together with Barbara from Cat Patches and the monthly guild meeting.  Last year I picked up a small table-top quilters ironing board at a yard sale, that still had its original not-so-shiny gray cover and the thinnest possible layer of foam underneath.  Yesterday, it was finally time to make a new cover for the board.  I had some vintage home dec fabric that I'd been wondering how I would ever use (more inherited stash!).  I made a paper pattern of the old gray cover, traced it on the new fabric, and zig-zagged some 8-4 linen rug warp left over from my weaving days around the edges for a drawstring.  Two layers of nice cotton batting, cover on top, and I now have this:

There is plenty of fabric leftover to make a second cover when this one becomes scorched, which it surely will with time.  I saved the pattern with notations to cut it about an inch larger all the way around, since this one is just a tad smaller than I would have liked, due to the extra layers of padding that I hadn't accounted for.  Small oops, could have been worse.
I won't bother to show DH's old long sleeve shirts now neatly hemmed into short-sleeve summer gardening shirts, etc. etc.   More utility stitching (I refuse to call it mending) on today's docket, along with a long-overdue cleaning of the sewing room. 
Oh yes, Happy Valentine's Day!  We've decided to celebrate with an early morning trip to the coast and our favorite breakfast spot in Lincoln City the next time DH has a day off that coincides with sunshine!  Hopefully soon, but this is western Oregon ...

Gifts of Love - The Living Water Quilt

Sunday brought another foggy day, at least on our side of the hill.  As we crested the hilltop on our way to church, the skies cleared and it was beautiful in the valley.  We returned a couple hours later to the gray skies once again.  A perfect afternoon for popping one of my old favorite movies  - Benny & Joon - into the DVD player and for starting a new little embroidery project.  This one is a sweet little quilt called Betsy's Closet - In Stitches by Acorn Quilt & Gift Company. 

 This little charmer finishes at 24 x 28 1/2 inches if I strictly follow the pattern, but I'm thinking that if September brings us a new granddaughter I may enlarge it a bit to make it big enough for use as a baby quilt.

The mail was very late arriving Saturday, and when we stopped at the mailbox on our way to church, we found a package containing these goodies! 

I was the lucky winner of Pam's giveaway last week on her blog Learning to Be Me.  I've already spotted at least two patterns in the book that will be on my list and those luscious fabrics will no doubt find their way into a couple of small projects on the drawing board right now.  Thanks so much Pam!

And that brings me to the real topic of this post.  With Valentine's Day rapidly approaching, all across blogland little quilted hearts are showing up on mug rugs, table toppers, and other quilty goodness, many created as gifts to show the special folks in our life how much we appreciate their love and friendship.  Well, Pam at Learning to Be Me has put her heart into creating a magnificent quilt of love and life over the past several years.    Her quilt was begun, intended as a gift for her Dad, who had asked her to make him a king-size quilt.   Pam decided to make his heart's desire, using a lot of his favorite color-orange.  She even hand quilted this gorgeous quilt!  Long story short, during the interim, her Dad has suffered some serious medical issues and is now residing in a nursing home where he will be unable to use the quilt.  After much thought Pam decided the best way her quilt could honor her father would be if she used it to raise funds for a mission that has been on her heart for some time.  And so, Pam's Living Water Quilt is being raffled in an effort to raise funds for Blood:Water Mission, a group dedicated to providing clean potable water to rural African villages.    The raffle will run through March 31, with a goal of raising $7,000 which is the approximate cost to drill one new well for an African village, where residents often must walk for long distances daily to fetch water from streams that are frequently contaminated sources of drinking water, leading to illness and high child mortality rates.

You can read more of Pam's story, see her gorgeous Living Water Quilt (and her second project currently underway called Project 40) by clicking here and here; and more information on Blood:Water Mission is available here. 

I am touched by Pam's generosity of spirit and hope that other bloggers who read her story will be similarly inspired to spread the word to help her reach her goal of turning her wonderful quilt into a gift of pure, clean, living water to people who have never known this luxury.

Later this morning I'm meeting up with Barbara of the very popular Cat Patches blog to have lunch and then I'll have the opportunity to introduce her to our local quilt guild at our monthly meeting.  Barbara and I are meeting up right behind the LQS, so guess where else we might be headed!    Looking forward to meeting Barbara in person - I think we first "met" while posting our monthly challenges for the Free Motion Quilt Challenge last year.  If you haven't yet met Barbara, head on over to Cat Patches and prepare to be regaled with the Adventures of Smitty, her delightful cat!  Oh, and she's also a quilter, a baker, and a master story teller!

Happy Monday!

A Visit to our Local Historical Society Museum

Today I had the opportunity to visit our local county historical society's museum which houses a nice variety of rural Oregon antiques, including some spectacular quilts, along with a genealogical library and some wonderful friendly volunteers who answer questions and provide guided tours of the buildings.    Today's visit was a direct result of an article by our local newspaper's historian in yesterday's edition regarding a community of Amish people who once lived in the valley approximately 2 miles as the crow flies from our home.  I hoped the museum might have some examples of true Amish quilts, and one of the volunteers brought out their one example, which wasn't currently on exhibit.  With white gloves on, she removed a very fragile and beautiful quilt from its box, and allowed me to photograph it.

The quilt, which was not dated, is in extremely fragile condition, although the blues have remained especially bright and striking.

A detail of the hand quilting motif.

Hand quilting as viewed from the back, which was originally green.

The museum has a wide variety of crazy quilts, which I'll show in a future post.  This post focuses on several other hand pieced and appliqued examples currently on exhibit.

This undated quilt has great movement in its pieced blocks and was one of my favorites.  The red fabric has faded badly and is worn through in a majority of the sashing. 

The striking snowball quilt top shown at the left in the photo above dates from the 1880s, and is thought to have been made from fabric pieces from a dressmaker's shop.  The circle pieces are backed with a muslin type fabric.  The quilt was never completed and large basting stitches are still visible.

Detail of the snowball quilt top.

The strips in this spider-web quilt dating to about 1928 are approximately 1/4 inch wide. 

This red cross friendship quilt dates to 1918.

Undated ribbon pinwheel quilt top.

Log cabin quilt, undated, constructed of primarily of velvets with some other fabrics.

I was unable to see the complete quilt, which is dated to approximately 1840.  Known as the Perkins Quilt, it  appears in the book Treasures in the Trunk by Mary Bywater Cross.

A great number of the quilts on  display were hand quilted with the Baptist Fan motif.  In some instances the fans were huge, as in the example on the left in the above photo.  I was particularly drawn to this particular quilt for the wonderful shadowing effect of the echoed quilting of the fans.  The embroidered and appliqued friendship quilt on the right dates to 1933.

This wonderful appliqued quilt dates to the 1870s, and is also featured in the book Quilts of the Oregon Trail by Mary Bywater Cross.  Each applique block measures at least 30 inches across.  Note the fading of some of the green leaves.

This sweet little quilt may have started life as a baby or doll quilt.  It was serving as a table topper in the exhibit.  I loved the fabrics in this, especially the yellows.

A beautifully quilted and well preserved example.  The quilt was undated.

Equally interesting is the chair it was draped across.   A birthing chair, the tag indicates it is over 100 years old, although I do not know if the 100 years is from the date in the 1970s when it was donated to the museum or 100 years from present time.  Happy that times have changed!

While I haven't sewn a single stitch today, it was a very happy quilting day!  I hope your day was equally rewarding with quilting pleasures.

A tiny finish

Not very much has been accomplished this week as I've been under the weather with a head cold.  But I did manage to finish up this little doll quilt yesterday.  The quilt began with the cast-off triangle scraps from the snowball blocks of the Easter baby donation quilt posted in January's NewFOs.

The HST's finishing at one inch were then stitched into pinwheel blocks.  There were enough for 18 little blocks that I decided to arrange into a little strippy style quilt.  After auditioning several sashing/border fabrics, this bright yellow from the scrap bin really begged to jazz things up, and the chocolate brown binding to wrap around everything seemed like just the ticket for this springtime/Easter theme.   It pretty much screams chocolate covered peeps, wouldn't you say?!

Here is the back, from a piece of vintage fabric in my stash.  The quilt was made entirely from small bits and pieces left over from some previous projects and inherited stash.

The quilt finished at 11 x 15-1/2 inches, and was pieced on my Singer 301A.  The Janome Horizon was used to stitch in the ditch around the pinwheel blocks and the simple free motion stitching in the sashing and borders. 

Since being introduced to Aurifil thread during SewCalGal's Free Motion Quilt Challenge last year, I've found myself increasingly using it almost exclusively, especially the 50 weight.  I really like it, and it works beautifully in all my vintage machines that I've tried it thus far, as well as the new Janome.  I even used it for my first machine applique project last month, and it was great.  I've also experimented some with the 40 and 28 weights, and recently heard that the 28 weight is great for hand quilting.  Will be trying it for handquilting my next little project.  (By the way, I have no affiliation with Aurifil other than spending quite a few of my retirement dollars in the last year adding to my thread color stash!)

This little quilt will soon be on its way to our 3 year old granddaughter, so she'll have a little something special while big brother opens his birthday presents later this month.