Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Jane's Adventure Into Quilting

My sisters and I grew up in a house surrounded by quilts and by mom and aunts and family friends always stitching and quilting around us, so I never think of myself as starting to make quilts at a certain age, I just think of myself as always having been a quilter. Our first efforts were by machine but we eventually moved to doing more and more of them by hand because it is so relaxing and portable. Jane, on the other hand, didn't come into the quilting world until the early 1990s










She had sewn for years and we had tried to convince her to make a quilt but she was convinced that she couldn't do it. Famous last words. Once she started there was no turning back - she became a quilting queen! She thinks that she has made about 20 full-sized quilts since then, about one a year, and they are hand pieced.









This is her first quilt, Tea Party, with 37 pieces to a block. Betty took it home from the cottage to freshen it up earlier this summer and decided to snap a few photos while it was on the line. It looks like a bit of a sampler but it's really only one block done in different colours.











Like most of us, she looks at it and says she would never pick these fabrics now, but it's still very pretty and gets lots of use. The rich fuchsia print that she used for the sashing is roses bunched up against each other - love it.












Not a bad start to a life of addiction, is it?....M

2 comments:

Steffi´s Candy Quilts said...

That's a really beautiful first quilt. The early 1990s fabrics are so cute and old-fashioned. Some of them look very familiar to me. I think there was not a very huge variety back then. :-)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this Marie. I think there are only 34 pieces per block, and the pattern is called "Tea Party" which is what attracted me to this one. You helped me cut all the pieces one September weekend at the cottage. Jane