Thursday, November 28, 2013

Mama's Quilts...

My mother was a long time quilter. She loved piecing patterns and loved color. She did not like quilting itself though, and usually tied her quilts but in the 1990s she started sending them to a lady in Greenbush, MN who did hand quilting for people. What lovely quilting it is too. I received the Myomi Kimono Girl quilt from Mama in 1995. She was making us a Pinwheel quilt for our queen bed when she passed away in 1997. The Pinwheel quilt is complete as far as the hand quilting and has only the binding left. I had stored these quilts for the last 16 years and just last week I got them out. I am using the Kimono quilt on the bed now and planning on binding the Pinwheel quilt.
The color of the background on the Kimono quilt is light green and it doesn't want to photograph well in a long shot of the quilt, but shows in the detail photo. the faces are a light cream color. Most of the fabrics in the Kimonos are Asian influenced, and look quite lovely in person.  I love the colors in both quilts, and my challenge now is to find a fabric from which to make the binding for the Pinwheel quilt.
Like me, Mama liked a lot of color, and a nice mix of fabrics. Scrappy quilters are like that. I probably will never make the quality of quilts my mother made, but I got started a lot later, what with a lifetime of garment sewing behind me. I never really wanted to make quilts, and I never knew you could quilt them yourself until the last few years. Not liking hand work at all, I was put off trying quilting, as I knew I would never hand quilt and was not about to pay the price for someone else to do that for me.  But finding that you could quilt on your home machine convinced me to try my hand at it myself so now I quilt. I love the quilting part more than the piecing - that's for sure. Now to riffle through my stash of cottons I have hoarded since the 1990s and find something to use for binding this quilt - maybe it should be a red material. I love the reds in the Pinwheel. I will update later on after I do the binding with a picture of the completed quilt.

4 comments:

glorm said...

Oh, I love the kimono quilt!

Did your mother initial and date her quilts? Do you?

Sue Hausman on her TV program once showed a quilt she had made and had embroidered her name. The problem: she had spelled her own name wrong.

catspec said...

Thanks glorm! She wrote out the reason for giving, the date and her full name plus the lady's full name and location who quilted each of her quilts. I try to remember to put a label with name and to whom and date, yes. :)

The Slapdash Sewist said...

What beautiful quilts, and a wonderful keepsake from your mom. I love her sense of color!

catspec said...

Thank you SSewist! ;) Yes, Mama never made anything bland or neutral in any of her crafts or pursuits of any sort.