KatyQuilts

Here is another quilt made by Grandma S. This is the only quilt I have seen that she machine appliqued. I know she was quite proud of her Pfaff Dial-A-Stitch machine and it was ancient when I entered the family. I am guessing this was her first shot at machine applique and it is charming! Sorry for the bad pics. This is a big quilt and I didn’t have a good place to photograph it,

She used all different colors of mini checked ginghams for the animal bodies.  She used a narrow zig zag on the edge and not a bit of fusible! Even the animal names she did in a very narrow black zig zag. She must not have had enough of one yellow because there are two different shades used in the border. Here is a close up of the “squirrel! block:

All the embroidery was done by machine. The batting is cotton. It is fairly thin but heavy and in pretty good shape.

Grandma lived with my mother in law for a time when I first started quilting. I learned everything I knew from library books and Kay Woods PBS series! One time, my mother in law had to go out of town for a week and I went and stayed with Grandma everyday while she was gone. I had just started quilting my second quilt. It was a queen sized Amish bars style quilt (terribly ugly!). I was quilting it using a large hoop. Grandma had never quilted anything without a floor frame. I bought an extra hoop for her to use and brought it over and asked her to help me quilt, She worked on one end and I worked on the other. Over and over she said, “I just never heard of doing it this way.” I could tell this really rocked her world! But I loved being able to work on a quilt with her and will always cherish those memories. (BTW, her stitches were the nicest part of that quilt!)

Until next time….

This quilt was made by my mother in law when she was very young and her mother. She said these blocks were purchsed as kits and that you can tell who made which blocks by the quality of the work :). My dear mother in law takes full responsibility for the unfortunate repair work across the top :P. This quilt was used a LOT and shows a lot of wear but I still love it. I wish you could see the lovely feather quilting.

Here are some details of some of the blocks:

The applique work is done with the finest buttonhole stitching I have seen. I now have this folded at the end of my bed.

Until next time….