psq, row 5

Here is the final row of squares.  I made it to the fabric store and bought some pale blue fabric for a border and some lime green binding.  I figured that the ladies who pieced these squares were not afraid of color, so I shouldn’t be either!

It took me a while to decide about the backing fabric.  The fabric store didn’t have a suitable quilt backing fabric (extra wide so you don’t have to piece it together) and I thought about trying to order something online so I wouldn’t have to deal with piecing the back myself.  At the last minute, I decided to check Target next door, where I was able to buy a cream-colored 100% cotton full size sheet for ten bucks.  I had debated doing something more colorful for the back, but let’s face it — all the action is up front on this beauty.

I want to finish this quilt in the next week and a half so that my mom can bring it with her when she heads to Illinois later this month.  If I do my traditional hand-sewing of the binding, it’s going to be a lot of work between now and then!

I can’t risk washing this, but I may try to spot-clean a few of the stains.  Poor Aunt Ada has got the funk.  I love this square!

 

psq, row 4

“Sewing was the consummate feminine skill, a domestic necessity but one practiced and refined until in the hands of many it achieved the status of an art form.  Girls were taught to sew before they were taught to read, and started on a four- or nine-patch quilt cover as soon as they could hold a needle.  Coverlets, counterpanes, crocheted samplers, and most especially the elaborate patchwork or appliqué front pieces for quilts were the highest expression of the material culture of women.  With patchwork, appliqué, and quilt stitchery, utility was a secondary consideration; these were primarily modes of creative artistry for women.  One farm woman testified to the importance of this avenue for her: ‘I would have lost my mind if I had not had my quilts to do.’”   John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 56.

“Midwestern women, among the rural women of the whole nation, produced an amazing variety of quilt designs; collectively North American women practiced and invented nearly a thousand different designs.  These patterns were traded back and forth, carried from place to place, transformed, and passed from mother to daughter along with sewing skills.  This wealth of design bespeaks a women’s material tradition, much of which has gone unrecorded and is today forgotten, a handicraft culture concomitant with women’s domestic responsibilities.”  Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, p. 127.

“Associated with this were the expected truisms, superstitions, and analogies: never patch an old garment with new cloth; she who sews before breakfast seeks disappointment; it is bad luck to quilt on Friday; sew on Sunday, stick the needle through Jesus’ heart.”   Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, p. 127.

See a pin and leave it lie,
All the day you will cry.
See a pin and pick it up,
All the day you’ll have good luck.

                           Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, p. 127.

 

psq, row 3

There is still a Mary Rumble in my grandma’s hometown.  Could it be the same lady?

Grandma Annie.

I particularly love the black and white print at 12 o’clock and the red and yellow one next to it, which reminds me of Spiro-graphs.

 

psq, row 2

I confess that I did not like this quilt top when I first saw it.  It seemed so garish to me with the bright pink and black embroidery.  But every day that I look at it draped over my couch, I love it more and more.

Although the blocks all seem similar, there is in fact some variation in each.  Although a few share one or two fabrics, most do not appear anywhere else in the quilt.

In addition to the fabric variation, all of the petals are slightly different shapes and the quality of the embroidery is a bit uneven.

There are twenty blocks in this quilt top and it occurred to me that if it were made as part of a quilt block exchange, there could be twenty similar quilts floating around Cass County, Illinois, right now.

 

pink signature quilt, row 1

After my grandmother passed away several years ago, my mom and her siblings were going through her things and one of my aunts came to us with a box and said, “Doesn’t one of you girls quilt?”  Inside the box were four quilt tops and one partially-quilted bowtie quilt.  Two of the quilt tops are signature quilts, using a Dresden plate variation for the pattern.  The third quilt is also a Dresden plate, but without signatures, and the fourth is a nine-patch variation.

We figure these quilts were done in the 1930s or 40s by my Grandma and the women in her church.  I use the bowtie quilt even though it’s incomplete and occasionally work on hand-quilting it.  A couple of years ago, I finished one of the signature quilts and gave it to my ma for Christmas.  I have been meaning to finish the others for my aunts and one of my uncles, and they are at the top of my UFO list.

Yesterday, I pulled this one out of the drawer and draped it over my couch so I would be inspired to work on it.  I really love the bold combination of the black floss and the intense pink.  I need to get to the fabric store one of these days for batting, backing, and binding, but I am planning on finishing this soon to send to my Aunt Ruth.  I will quilt this as I did the one for my mother — with a very simple stitch-in-the-ditch around each block so as not to detract from the pattern.

I love to look at the names (most of which my mother didn’t recognize) and the incredible fabric selections.  These are such a treasure and it’s a shame that they have been folded up in a box and then a drawer for so long.  The time has finally come to finish these beauties so they can be properly displayed.