Oldies But Goodies

Several weeks ago I did a trunk show of my quilts at the Mariner's Quilt Guild. As I went through my quilts, deciding what to take from an almost 39 year "quilting career" I came across some favourites from many years ago.

Windowpane" (machine pieced and hand quilted) for Kate, my first quilt after many pillows and wallhangings. I started small, I didn't want to get discouraged. This was made in 1973, there weren't any quilt stores here then, I bought fabric wherever I could find it. Remember Woolco? They had one of the largest fabric departments around and a few cottons. This pattern came from an early magazine MacCall's Quilting. The quilt is starting to show it's age. It has survived a crative daughter who loved to draw (with markers) in bed! It has kept 2 rough and tumble grandsons cosy and is now frequently found wrapped around the base of a Christmas tree. I love seeing it being used, worn and all.

Amish Pinwheel (machine pieced and handquilted)was made in 1987 after having worked through the exercises in Roberta Horton's Amish Adventure book I made this quilt. In keeping with Amish style I used several different blacks (at one point I had swatches of 27 different blacks!). I loved making this quilt. There is something wonderful about pinwheels. While I was making this quilt, Kate put her name on it, she loved it and it has been graced a bed in her home ever since. I must go back to the Amish style. I still have a good collection of plain fabrics.

Underwater, a small wallhanging (machine pieced and handquilted) in the style of the traditional pattern Chinese Coins. I have used this pattern before. Again I found this in Kate's collection! Good thing she lives close by.

I loved sharing my quilts with the quilters at the Mariner's QG. It was a good exercise to go through, putting the quilts in a bit of order chronologically for the first bit then by type - applique, contemporary and bed quilts and I finished with a few WIPS. It also gave me a chance to take some new digital photographs of the quilts.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Hallowe'en was always a big deal in the Robson household. When the kids were little, we lived in a great neighbourhood with lots of other kids and Hallowe'en was one of the highlights of the year. Lots of planning and decision making with regard to costumes and makeup. No store bought costumes at our house! Come to think of it I don't think you could go out and buy much, the retailers hadn't discovered this market yet.

1984 was the year of the bathroom wall (most likely in Paris!) and the 2 sided boy - one a tramp the other rather distinguished! For Kate it was those checked tights she had to have when we saw them in a shop in Toronto. She got a lot of mileage out of those over the years. Andrew's costume came from a stash of costumes from my parents that were all based on burlap and which were a great source of inspiration for us over the years.

Then Hallowe'en began to appear in my quilt world and I couldn't resist.

This wallhanging Hallowe'en Memories came from an old issue of Miniature Quilts magazine (issue #11, Fall 1993). Orange was also a colour of cotton fabric that was hard to come by in those days.

 I love the bat with those beady eyes! The wall hanging is machine pieced and hand quilted. It was pieced the "old fashioned" way with templates and scissors, the squares are 1". Rotary cutters hadn't hit the quilt world yet when I made this one.

This wallhanging is called Pumpkin Trio and is from a pattern by The Rabbit Factory.

Now the next generation loves Hallowe'en as much as their parents. This is Evan's quilt Hallowe'en Hijinks. I took a spider web quilt class from Heather Stewart and decided not to go scrappy but to use some of the Hallowe'en fabrics I had been collecting.

Ben's quilt came next and I used the Disappearing Nine Patch pattern. There are lots of versions of this online and it was fun to make.

Hallowe'en Surprises was machine pieced and machine quilted. I made the same one, re-arranged the fabrics for Molly and soon I will have to make another one for our soon-to-arrive grandson (yes, we know Molly is going to have a brother, any day now!). Happy Hallowe'en!!

Everything Old is New Again

The new trend sweeping the quilt world today is "Modern Quilts". I am struggling with the term, with why a style has to be labelled and with why young quilters seem to be drawn to it. When I started quilting and for many, many years I bought fabric because I liked it, that is still how I buy fabric because I like it, not because of whose name was on the selvedge. There was hardly ever a name on the selvedge let alone the name of a designer or line of fabric. I was lucky if the brand was there like VIP, Cranston or RJR. I coveted what I did buy and mixed it altogether in my quilts, the more the merrier! I store it all on open shelves (I like to know if it is going to fade!) sorted by colour. And now I have sorted out the stripes, polka dots, batiks and conversation/novelty prints.

My solids are all packed away from the days when I was into Amish quilts...a great adventure thanks to Roberta Horton and her book An Amish Adventure. Roberta was a huge influence for me and her book is a great exercise in understanding and playing with colour. For someone who made quilts of many prints and no solid colours this was a real challenge, a good one! I went through the book chapter by chapter and di all the exercises. For a while a lot of family had Amish inspired pillows and wallhangings from all the squares I made. I am beginning to think it is time to revisit that era!

All Things Bright and Beautiful was inspired by an old quilt I saw in the 1979 edition of the Quilt Engagement Calendar edited by Cyril Nelson and published by Dutton. The original quilt was made of silks, satins, brocades and velvets and was heavily embellished with fancy embroidery stitches. I loved the geometric pattern behind all the stitches and rich fabrics so I drew it out on graph paper. Then I made templates for each of the pieces and carefully machine sewed them together. When I finished piecing it it reminded me of hot air balloons which is why I hand quilted it in a sort of balloon-like shape. Could this be considered a "modern quilt" today? I made it in the mid 1980's. Here is a detail of the hand quilting, it is stab stitched.

Or maybe this one, Sweet Dreams is a quilt I made for my Grandson, Evan, his first big boy quilt. It is machine pieced and hand quilted (stab stitched). I made it in 2005 before seeing any pictures of modern quilts, it just seemed like an easy way to make a simple, colourful quilt.

Penny Candy is a small wallhanging inspired by the pattern Chinese Coins, it is machine pieced and hand quilted (stab stitched). The fabrics are commercial batiks and hand dyes, some I dyed and some from others quitlers. I made this in 2000 could it be anther modern quilt? I guess I just love to be in both worlds, traditional and modern but with a twist. I think I'll stay away from labels though, make what I like and hope I can inspire others.