Thursday, July 13, 2017

FINISHED QUILTING MAMA'S QUILT TOP

My Mother loved to stitch these type of quilt tops, but I don't know how many of them she made.  The first one she made was for our wedding gift in 1962 and it was a different pattern than this one.  I think she made 2 of this pattern which was made by the Paragon quilt company.


The quilting lines are printed on the fabric with blue dots, so I just followed the lines - which isn't really very easy.  I used a walking foot to quilt the straight cross hatching lines and the straight lines around the center part.  Then I switched to a free motion quilting foot for the curved lines and feathers.


I think when these kits were made, most people were hand quilting because the border part with the feathers and then the straight lines on each side of the feathers really doesn't lend itself to machine quilting very well - at least not my style of machine quilting.  I quilted the feathers and then went back around to do the straight lines on each side of the feathers using the free motion quilting foot.




I continuously stitched up and down the lines and had to stitch on top of other stitching when I reached the feathers and or the outer scalloped border.


I'm glad to be finished with the quilting and think it looks pretty good from a distance.  By the way, my Mom usually had a ladies group hand quilt these for her (for $100).  I wonder when long arm quilting machines were invented as I believe she did these before they were around.  I will be basting my Dear Jane quilt soon.  That will be interesting to quilt.

14 comments:

  1. What a beautiful treasure from your mom! The quilting looks good to me and I'm sure once those lines are washed out, no one will know what you did differently from the original plan. And I'm excited for the Dear Jane...that one has been in the works a while, but is sure to be a beauty!

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  2. Your Mom's quilt is beautiful! You did a nice job on the quilting. This is one to treasure.

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  3. What a treasure! Your mother did beautiful embroidery work! Your quilting looks perfect for it to me, but I'm sure you were stressing some while quilting it. It is truly beautiful! ---"Love"

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  4. Such a pretty quilt. I think you quilting looks wonderful.

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  5. Wow, that's a labour of love. So much stitchery and very pretty indeed. I think you've done a great job on the quilting. I overheard a lady in a quilt shop the other paying $130 (about $100 USD) just to have a binding sewn on a quilt.

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  6. Oh this is wonderful! I love the colors of the embroidery and your quilting completes it perfectly. My mother other cross stitched a double bed sized quilt. she had it one her bed for many years. I think hers was pre-quilted. Is that possible?

    Enjoy this beauty!

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  7. That is a gorgeous heirloom! I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to quilt that feather design and then all the background channels - definitely designed for hand quilting. Do you have any special method for removing all the old blue markings?

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  8. It looks amazing - what a great treasure to have!

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  9. I made this quilt, one of the first I completed. I did the hand quilting and we used the quilt for years. Yours is beautiful.

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  10. A rare and precious memory of your mom. How neat that you worked on this together! The quilting looks great. Do you ever hand quilt? I love to do it, but don't take the time too often.

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  11. I'm sure that quilting machines were around in the 1940's. I remember my great-grandmother pieced quilts all the time, sitting in a little oak rocking chair. Originally my grandmother and her two sisters would help "Little Grandma" (that's what I called her because she was tiny and my Grandmother was tall and round so I called her Big Grandma) hand-quilt the quilts. The baby quilt she made for me was one of the hand-quilted ones. However, when Little Grandma died in the early 40's there were several tops that had not been quilted and Big Grandma sent them out and had them machine quilted. I have a couple of those quilts and I'm sure the quilting is with pantographs. Most of the quilts Little Grandma made in the last years of her life were scrappy quilts and all of them had a lot of the same fabrics in them that my baby quilt has and it's scrappy too. Of course my baby quilt is quite faded from all the washing, but the machine quilted ones have not been used on beds because I save them for display. I just pop them in the dryer on "air" to fluff and freshen them. Well, that's way more info that you wanted to know!! :-)

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  12. It looks lovely to me, Ruth. What a treasure you and your Mom have created! It does look like something that would be challenging to machine quilt, but it appears that you rose to the challenge!

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  13. What a treasure! Her exquisite stitching and your lovely quilting!

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