Early Quilt Experiments

After reading my post about the quilt 'talk' I gave, cyber friend, Karoda asked if I had ever posted any of the pages from my quilting memory book on my blog. Of course I never had, but her comment made me think that it might not be a bad idea.

I have no photos of the early quilts I made in 1976 – and if I did I suspect that I would cringe. I had fallen in love with the richness and simplicity of Amish quilts. These quilts became powerful images in my mind. Those first quilts were Amish knock offs. During that time I also made quilts to sell. A twin sized quilt was $50. I thought I had hit the jack pot. I wonder how long they lasted? Most of the solid colored fabrics that were available then were a poly/cotton blend – can you imagine? There were no rotary cutters. I am not sure if I had decent scissors and I would not have recognized a template if one was tossed to me. I was so young and naive at this point. My quilting then was also questionable - sketchy at best – I can’t imagine what I thought I was doing using a puffy polyester batting either! Maybe that’s all I could get at the time. I remember Mountain Mist being available– I used to love the packaging and free patterns that came in the roll. I think, if I were to see any of these first quilts I would think they were just plain horrid – and be even more shocked that someone bought them. One person, I remember, bought a set of 4 quilts – WoW $200! That was a lot of money at the time ! Horrid quilts perhaps but they were the beginning of my love affair with quilts and quilting.

These photos represent the beginning of my "return" to quilting after being on hiatus when I thought, for some insane reason, that I needed to climb the a career ladder. The photo of the little hearts baby quilt is an old Polaroid - and, as such ,it's not a great photo. The hearts were, at least, all hand appliqued and the quilting - what there was of it - was all done by hand. The fabrics were relatively boring - pinks and creams. There is also a scary photo of what I looked like at the time! Yikes !

I find that having a 'quilting memory book' is really valuable thing. I like looking at where I have been in order to see to where I am. Does that make any sense?! I keep my ribbons and acceptance notices in the book too (funny thing though - I seem to not have kept too many of the rejection notices !). Hope you have enjoyed this peek at my past !