My mother Frances always liked quilts. She loved fabrics and had bookcases full of patterns. She enjoyed going to quilt fairs and looking at the many combinations of colors that were put together making each standard pattern unique to the person who made it. She worked for years hand sewing pieces together from scraps of fabrics; some with meaning that had been her daughter’s dresses and some just scraps of color that fit into the crazy quilt pattern she was developing. She finished but a few, but had ideas for many.
I have this same interest in quilting, but from a standard point of machine sewing them until they are finished. I have lots of fabric from my mom and more I have collected myself. I have finished a few by now, but none have meant so much to me as the one I made for John and Rachel as their wedding quilt. I am mostly a square and triangle pattern person and steer away from applique’. For the wedding quilt I wanted the double wedding ring pattern that required me to learn the skill of machine applique’.
I found the pattern from Eleanor Burns “Eggs in a Basket” quilt book. Eleanor has a great method to skip the hard steps and through planning will help you put a quilt together in no time. With the best steps from Eleanor it still took me from July 12th to Sept 14th to finish this quilt, working at least an hour or so a day and the good part of every weekend.
I wanted white or off-white with pastels. I had chosen white eyelet, but found the fabric would never hold up for many years and switched to a white weavers cloth as the background. I selected 8 pastels including a couple of peices in beige that blended pretty well together, but were strong enough colors that the pattern was not lost.
About a hundred or so groups of six small trapezoid shaped rectangles were sewn together. They were then sewn onto facing and turned inside out with a hemostat. I couldn’t believe that when the time came, Stan, my husband, actually had one in his tool collection. It was tedious as they all had to be straightened out and ironed flat to freezer paper. I had arches all over the place. I made a few too many, but who is counting.
The arches were placed on the white fabric and machine sewn down with a blanket stitch with invisible thread. Then the small corners were added and the bigger squares were sewn together to make the quilt. Add some thick batting for those extra cold Boston winters, hand tie the top and middle batting to a big sheet, finished the edges and voila – Wedding quilt finished in about two months.
I didn’t tell John that I was making a quilt. He kind of guess it when I gave them the big box. I had already made Rachel and him a few quilts so this was a bit of a surprise.
They were so happy when they opened the box. Rachel put it out on the bed to take a look at the pattern. She said she so appreciated this gift. She asked if I had talked with John about it. She told John that she had really wanted me to make them a wedding quilt, but wasn’t sure that John had told me about her request.
Even though John had said nothing about Rachel wanting a quilt, I recieved the message somehow and was thrilled to see how happy they were.
Joyce