QUILT GALLERY

 "Quilts need air and sunlight every week,to keep them fresh......"
                            -Dorothy Adamek (Carry Me Home)

I was trying to find some of my favourite quilts. Problem is, there are so many, so many pics, so I thought I would start here. With the Winter Solstice.  Took me 7 months to hand quilt.  I took a class to learn how to applique. The teacher kept yanking off the leaves and complaining   it was supposed to be in pastels. Why hadn't I done pinks and yellows, like everyone else?  I got bored. So I quit the class and did my own thing with it. 

 Civil war quilts ( Vintage lat 1800's) fascinate me to no end. A lot of the squares are simple.......

 But when you put them into a Sampler Quilt,  they kind of go snap, crackle pop.

 My mother never was a quilter, nor her mother. She was a seamstress.  But she taught me to crochet. We crocheted the lace panel on the next quilt. But we never got it finished. Summer after summer we plowed through crochet thread. But it never got any bigger. Was supposed to be a huge tablecloth.  For years I kept it in a box in storage. Forgot about it.Then a few years ago I decided to try something different.

 I saw an idea for a Memory Quilt. Basically wild appliques of all sorts of laces, hankerchiefs, what nots, attached to a quilt panel. 

 I even attached the  remnant from her 1936 bridal bouquet

 Everything else had rusted away, but one length survived.

So I made it the focal point, centred  with the amethyst kilt pin she liked to wear and her pewter cross. I got that cross for $25, when I was a teenager in Victoria. Hid it till Xmas. She would walk by that antique shop week after week and look at it in the window. Then when I bought it, it was gone from the window. She lamented  about that.  At Xmas she was thrilled. I never got her anything she seemed to like. Until then. She loved that cross and wore it day after day, until people at the bus stop  came to think she was a nun, and ask her to bless them. She had a hard time with that, so eventually she only wore it around the house, or for  company . 

 I draped her brass ended 70 year old tape measure, pins, brooches,  earrings, doilies we made. Friends gave me gifts of pearl collars, hankerchiefs, gold leaf fabric ......

 I added my Grandfather's Grouse Foot Kilt pin, complete with claws. Apparently he got it at the airport in Scotland in the late 40's to bring as a gift to my mother. She never wore it. She was always afraid it would get lost.

 So many things kept in boxes and drawers, now out on my mother's quilt. It's not something her conservative self would probably do. We were very different, but not that  different in some things; in her own way, she was inspiring. I think her Memory Quilt is quite cool. Her memory lives on my wall.  Quilts are funny that way.

 Something else I love to do is collect ethnic quilts. I picked up these Kartha quilts recently, at a local 1000 Villages free trade fair at Christmas. Soft cotton sari fabric, all hand sewn. Softest things ever.

 Another of the Civil war quilts is the Log cabin style. It looks like stained glass when you hold it up to the light. It's believed that many quilts from that era held hidden messages for the abolitionists who helped get slaves to the North and freedom. The design of the Wagon Wheel  sewn into a quilt, for example, meant that the local blacksmith would help some slaves  escape.

 A LOG CABIN quilt, hung outside a house, was the sign  that  the house was a safe house. The log cabin square with a red middle meant trouble and to continue on. If it was a yellow square it meant caution. Any other coloured centre meant it was a good house to turn to.

 Northern Star quilt square was the sign to go North to safe houses and freedom.

 When the travellers reached Canada, they were given a quilt square of roses. It meant freedom was obtained at last.

 Many of the quilt symbols and ideas for the Underground railroad were obtained  through verbal tradition.

 Sometimes a quilt was just a quilt. Meant to keep people warm and give the feeling of safety. A quilt is an incredible thing.

 Meanwhile, I have a lot of fabric to wade through. Not sure how many quilts I've done. Maybe  a couple thousand....maybe more over the years.My house is polluted with fabric.  So, moving on to  the next pile  that has a quilt lurking somewhere in the depths....

 Photographs 2019

                                                   Spencer and Smokey 2017

Waiting for the blooms.....

 "You keep waiting for the bloom of flowers, of which you have to sow seeds yet......." 
                 -Dr. Steve Maraboli (Behavioural Scientist)

 So, yes indeedy,I have been  waiting, and waiting, and waiting.........

 For the weather to co-operate. It's soggy. And boggy. About 8 degrees celsius.  And frost still. Here and there.On the ground. On the rooftops. On the fence.  Frost. Ugh.

  There are pods in the greenhouse.  On the evergreen clematis. A month behind. Feels like time has slowed.I don't mind rain or wind, but  it's been a long hard winter for the Campbell River area. I lost quite a few bushes and parts of trees from the snow and the wet. Time to move on.Time for something warmer.

 A year ago  the outdoors looked like this. Flocks of starlings taking over the birdbath. Leaves on the trees.  No frost. No cold. 

 So far, the bleeding heart has only pushed its little snout up thru the dirt.Last year it was flowering at this time.  It likes the cool. But not the chill of this early spring. Brrrr. 

 "So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers." 
                      -Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986) (Argentine story writer)

I have to keep myself busy . This waiting is  something else. Drummmmmed fingers on table. Think. Think. Then the light bulb went off: Fabric. Fabric's good. Dyeing fabric. In Tea and Coffee and Beet Juice and Tumeric. Even better. Have had a ton of quilt flats just waiting to be dyed. If I have to wait to plant, might as well play with fabric.

 So while the quilt flats soaked in my concoction  of Tea and so forth, I sallied forth . I shouldn't sally forth. I always come back with flats.  I must stop this sallying. Only leads to Geraniums. Seed Geraniums. Lettuce and other veggies. I just couldn't help it. They were just sitting there. In the garden centre....begging me to bring them home. 

 Well, after all. I have to wait to plant. Might as well buy some plants. Just a flat or two. Maybe three.......( Oh, and a Deer tarp........don't let me forget that)

  Once the flats  were happily ensconced in the greenhouse, where they wait to be buried in earth, it was time to finish distressing  quilt flats. One of my favourite things to do is make quilts look distressed. My mix of Tea, Beet Juice, Coffee, Tumeric, and even a touch of tomatoe juice, did  a great job.

 "The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks. " 
                               -Tennesse Williams (1911-1983) (playwright)

  This is my favourite quilt square. It's called Rising Star.  I dumped it, the whole thing, into just beet juice. It's the colour of the clematis that hasn't flowered yet.

 Once everything was all dyed, the next step was to get them to look more tarnished, even wrinkled. I've discovered that if I put them all into the drier and  basically " cook" them dry in the machine they will get a more worn look. That Civil War Era  look that I just LOVE so much.

 "A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill, except for learning how to grow in rows." -Doug Larson (1926-) (Columnist)

 So while the quilts were drying away  getting wrinkled and old, I got it into my head that I should go get some Dahlias. So off I toddled to Canadian Tire and snatched up about 25 of them. I just couldn't resist. (But I forgot the Deer Tarp......must get one)

 Going to plant Dahlias on the hill with Velvet Queen Sunflowers. The tall Maroon ones that sway in the wind. But Dahlias don't like a lot of frost, or wet or sog and bog. So they will have to wait in their box. A little less chilly would be fine.

 Along with the Lily of the Valley, and Sweet pea seeds.Ahh yes, the ever present sweet peas.  Can't even plant them yet. Sweet Pea seeds like  cool earth, but this earth is just a bit  wet and cold. Probably rot.  I will have to wait a week or two. But by the third week of April  I plan to sow seeds.The weather's got to be better by then. Right? ( Oh, and remind me to get a Deer Tarp........)

 Lettuce,broccoli, cabbage and more lettuce, and radishes,and more broccoli. Yummm. I need to get a deer tarp to put over them.Hmmmmm. They will like the veggies. I can hardly wait to plant. But waiting I am. Waiting and waiting and waiting.......

 Plus: Dahlias, Sunflowers, Veggies, more sunflowers, Sweet peas  ( oh yea, and a deer tarp...mustn't forget that).......

 The quilts look somewhat aged. Not too much. Not too little. Still nice looking with a bit of a tan. Good way to spend waiting on  these rainy, chill  days.
( Making note to self: Get a  Deer Tarp......and maybe some more dahlias, or glads, or....)

 "Weather forecast for tonight: DARK." -George Carlin(1937-2008)

2017 Photographs

Civil War Quilts

 "I LOVE quilting, and have plenty of material witnesses."

 When it rains here, it pours. When it pours I quilt. In the 3rd and 4th quarter of the 19th Century, the Log Cabin Quilt became popular  when people started roaming more after the Civil War.  The lattice bars became to signify the idea of the Log Cabins  built by pioneers. Little House on the Prairie and all that sort of thing.

 Just finished two large quilt tops. So much left to do. Like backing. Batting. Stitching.

 Decided to do the quilts in my favourite style of all; civil war . The first was a Log cabin pieced around an orange red centre. The reddish centre speaks of hearth and home, and the dark and light pieces signify the dark and light of life in the family.

 Some of the fabric was reproduction,some was not. Most came from my downstairs stash. Then I dunked the entire panel in tea and coffee and let it steep. So to speak.

 "Good friends are like quilts. They never lose their warmth."

 The blocks for the Log Cabin I did in alternate colour schemes. One earthy, one in a dull blue civil war theme. I kind of ran out of the  dull blue, so at one point had to introduce a lighter blue,but I liked it a lot, especially once it was soaked in the tea and coffee.

 It's good to try and use up as much of the  fabric you have lying around in boxes. Makes it challenging when trying to find enough  fabric, but since I am somewhat a hoarder, there seemed to be plenty of fabric to go around.

 "Friendships are sewn one stitch at a time."

 Then the finished Log Cabin panel  took on a darker, smoother overtone after sitting in its bath for half the morning. Older Log Cabin quilts were done with scrappy fabric pieces on foundations to make them stable.

 The colours tend to give off a radiating pulse.....optical illusion.....I love the Log cabin block. Has many ways of being set.There are many variations on the design of log cabin. Barn Raising, Sunshine and Shadow, Straight Furrow, to name a few. This particular design I found was called "Independence".

 "April 14, 1861. Civil war has finally been declared....first gun of rebellion was fired at Charleston"- from the diary of Rebecca L. Richmond ( Civil War Diary Quilt). Many quilts were made of silk, wool and cotton pieces and were incredibly elegant and used to raise money for the war effort at the time.

Both northern and southern women made quilts for the army and their families.

 "My soul is fed with needle and thread."

 It became important for the army  men to have warm quilts in the hospital cots. The women of the country sewed quilts, using their stash of fabric to make many quilts . The basic nine patch quilt design was used quite a bit.

 Stripes, woven fabrics were used the most.

 "We should have nothing in our houses, which we did not either know to be useful  or believe to be beautiful." - William Morris, the Beauty of Life, 1880

 "May your bobbin always be full."

                                                         Civil War Sampler

 Civil War Log Cabin                                                 Helpful Bo, my sewing buddy......