Yesterday I showed you the jelly cupboard with my quilt collection inside. Several of you asked about the quilts…their origins, where I got them, and if I made any of them. Here’s a photo collage of the main quilts. I didn’t include the chenille bedspread that I bought at an antique dealer in Delta, Colorado when I started my three month odyssey. It matched the one on my bed when I was a little girl. I also didn’t include my first attempt at making a quilt. I used a fabric panel of an Amish quilt and just hand quilted it like it was pieced. 

I’ve numbered the quilts so here is all I know about them:

1. The year I made the wedding quilt for Daughter #1, I paid a visit to Cabin Creek Quilters. I ultimately hired the woman in the fabric room to hand stitch my daughter’s king sized quilt and she did a lovely job. I don’t recall exactly how, but I purchased a crib-sized quilt from Cabin Creek Quilters to use as a wall hanging. For those of you unfamiliar, Cabin Creek Quilters was founded by Sharon Rockefeller when her husband was Governor. It was a quilter’s co-op and gave Appalachian women the opportunity to make some money while practicing an age-old skill. An all handmade quilt is pricey and all I could afford at the time was the crib-sized and I believe even that one was around $175.00.
2. This is a small doll quilt made for me by my good friend, Judy. She gave it to me for Christmas one year. Handmade gifts are the greatest treasures, aren’t they?
3. I have a penchant for feed-sack and flour-sack material from the ‘30s to the ‘50s. This is one I picked up somewhere along the way. I believe it is a churn dash pattern, but I’m not totally sure. I don’t know the names of all the patterns. This one is in very poor condition and wouldn’t even be considered a “cutter quilt”…one that you would cut up to make crafts from.
4. I also love two-color quilts. This is one I picked up on my travels but I can’t recall exactly where. It’s beautiful and in very good condition. The majority of the “pattern” comes from the quilting in the large center squares.
5. I’ve always loved this quilt because it is bright and cheery. I bought it in Colorado and for a long time it sat folded up on a shelf under a wicker table on my front porch. Unfortunately, the sun hit it without me catching it when I was at work and there is a faded section.
6. This is one of my favorite quilts. I bought it at my friend Maureen’s garage sale. The little tiny squares in the nine-path corners really make it pop and, like I said in #4, I love two color quilts. 
7. I bought this quilt at an antique shop in Vienna, WV…my hometown. I was at Mom’s after her funeral, fixing up her house to sell. I remember thinking to myself as I was going through her things….why doesn’t she have any quilts? The only one she had was a hand-tied comforter that my grandma had made and it was so old, it fell apart as I tried to handle it and I had to throw it away. This was my attempt at “commemorating” the occasion and remembering my mama’s love for me.
8. This is another quilt I picked up in West Virginia during one of my trips here. It is made of old feed sacks. I remember my grandma bringing a piece out to Pop-Pop before we left for the feed store. It was my job to match the pattern and pick out sacks that matched.
9. This quilt had my favorite story attached. I was in West Virginia with Daughter #2. Mom agreed to watch her for a few days while I had a little break. I was driving down a highway and saw a sign for Hinton, WV and “historic downtown” under it. That’s what I’m all about when I travel…finding those really cool old towns that time seems to have forgotten. There was a small antique store down by the railroad tracks. There was a section filled with quilts. This one is a crib quilt and it was hanging on the wall. The more I looked at it, the more it spoke to me. The handwork was quite primitive but I knew there had to be a story. I asked the clerk and she said it had been made by an old black woman in town who was blind. Her granddaughter would cut out the pieces and lay them out on a table in the correct pattern. She would pick each one up and stitch it to the next. She was well in her 90’s. I had to have it and I’ve hung it over the bed in my guest room for years.
10. This quilt is very special to me. Mom embroidered the state birds and flowers on muslin squares when she was pregnant with my older brother. After practicing on that small wall hanging, I tried my hand at piecing the squares into a quilt. I didn’t know you were supposed to wash the fabric first. And if I had it to do over, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen that red and blue. When I took it to my friend Ginny at Log Cabin Quilts to machine quilt it, I had tried to hand quilt part of it and it was a real mess. She took those old stitches out, got rid of that fluffy microfiber filling I had used (and the sheet I had used for backing…like I said, I had no idea what I was doing at the time) and finished it like it was supposed to be done.
11. This is a Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern made with depression era fabrics. I just love the amount of work that goes in these quilts. I think I bought this one at an antique store in Carbondale, Colorado. The fabric is very, very fragile and has worn away in several areas, but if it’s folded just right, it’s still displayable. This one was hand pieced then quilted on a treadle sewing machine.
12. This is another small wall hanging my friend Judy made for me for another gifting occasion. She is one of the most talented and generous people I know. She was my neighbor for many years in Colorado and I miss her very much.

I love quilts, but these days it better sing to me or I’m not buying it. I am, however, getting back into quilting myself and will probably continue to create pretties for family members. I love the idea of someone down the line treasuring something I made with love.

❤️

“The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.”

Isaiah 28:20 NIV