Quilts, Quilts, and Rescue quilts

Some of the people in my house are retired, but my sister isn’t there, yet.  Still working.  Jan quilts for her Rolodex of customers.  She makes quilts for us.  We all have warm flannel winter quilts and pretty summer quilts for our beds.  She makes quilts to hang in the studio to give customers visuals of how she might quilt their quilts. 

Of course there are more.  The rescue quilts. 

Jan seldom meets an abandoned quilt top she does not love.  In all fairness, the maker probably did not abandon the quilt, but ran out of time to quilt it.  Heirs and assigns, not valuing the work, put it right in the estate sale, or send it straight off to a thrift shop or Goodwill.  So many unfinished quilts tops find their way into Jan’s studio she bought a separate cabinet to hold them.

Rescued tops, waiting...waiting...

Toby helping

As she has time she puts them together with a backing and batting, gets them quilted and bound.  Jan knows so much about old quilt patterns, old quilt fabrics, old quilt piecing styles, that when she’s done she says she can hear some one’s grandma in heaven, smiling and saying “Look, it’s done!  Someone can use that quilt, now.”

Jan has donated many of her rescue quilts to be raffled for charities.  Many of them have gone to TLC, the Transitional Living Center we make quilts for.  Her rule of thumb:  keep them until she has admired them enough, then let them go.  Still, they backed up on her.  There are a couple of tubs of finished rescue quilts in the studio.

On a recent trip to The Crooked River Herb Farm Shop Jan put her head together with Kathleen and they came up with the scheme to simultaneously fill an empty corner of Kathleen’s expanded shop and fund the purchase of more abandoned quilt tops by selling some in the shop.  That’s what Jan and I did today.

Kathleen watching

Jan displaying, customer watching

A quilt label

Display front

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The Quilt Corner

Janice loves to quilt!

You know my sister quilts; I’ve said something about her and quilts from time to time.  Click on Janice over in labels and you’ll see how often!

Possibly in self defense, but more probably because she has a good deal to say about her art, Jan started her own blog.  I see where she’s headed now, explaining how she does things.  Little does she know…

Even before this country joined World War I, the international and American Red Cross organizations were involved as ambulance drivers, and hospital staff. Red Cross chapters raised money by making and raffling quilts, many with a red cross theme. 

One of Jan’s current methods involves making quilts from old shirt fabrics.  She and her friend Patty shop thrift stores for men’s shirts, and spend chatty evenings cutting them into useable parts.  There also is a steady stream of beautiful shirts from my son-in-law, who wears through the right elbow of his dress shirts in short order.

This quilt pattern has been around in one form or another as a tribute to Clara Barton and the Red Cross.  Jan made it from her salvaged shirt fabrics.

Give her a look: Janice loves to quilt. 

Big enough for a bed

Jan's first open quilting date is in July, so now the quilt will sit on the shelf for awhile.  Emily and Laura did a fine job arranging the block sequence.  I sewed one sashing strip on the wrong side and briefly considered just flipping the strip.  Briefly.  I took it off and did it right. Caroline walked right by it in the studio yesterday, in three strips and a couple more block piles.  I love how oblivious kids are.

I started this eight years ago

A long time ago, probably eight years ago, Ann and I were poking around shops in Wisconsin and I came upon a sale of a bag of batik fat quarters.  A vinyl bag, with the hues arranged in descending rows of shininess.   I don’t know a fat quarter from a thin dime, but bought the whole four or five pounds of shades of the rainbow.  They sat on a shelf for quite some time.

When I started the scrap clearance project a while back I did progress from sewing fabric to phone book pages, to making an actual paper pieced block called snowflake.  I made so many of those blocks I put together a quilt for Carol.  I thought about using the batik to make a New York Beauty, but found I can no longer get that degree of precision cutting from my hands.  The shiny bag went back on the shelf.

I bought a remnant bolt of muslin a couple of years ago and set about making more snowflake blocks from the batik.  I could make five five inch blocks from each fat quarter.  I made blocks until I ran out of muslin.  The charity quilt project happened about then, and the snowflake blocks went into a basket.  Last summer I had Laura and Emily lay out the blocks.  Those little girls are great with color; they spent an afternoon moving blocks from one position to another.  They stacked them up in order, numbered each row, and put the blocks back in the basket.

When I thought I ran out of charity quilt blocks a couple of weeks ago I decided I’d start back on putting together the snowflake quilt, which will be very nice for Caroline’s new bedroom.  Jan cut the setting strips for me during the week, and I thought what a great weekend project.  I’ll put that quilt together this weekend.

Now we’re down to the funny part.  There are one hundred eighty blocks.  Each with a frame and a corner stone.  I’ve been eight years making this quilt and just because all the blocks are done and all the setting strips cut, I’m going to finish in one more weekend.  When quilts fly.  But, I am half done.  The drawer and a half of charity quilt blocks that just keep coming in won’t spill over before I finish the quilt for Caroline’s new room, next weekend.

Half the quilt

OMG

Jan just got in from her guild meeting tonight.  This is a group of long arm quilters, mostly newbies, who started up a year ago and meet to exchange knowledge.  They asked Jan to help them start the guild and hoped she’d hang around and lend her business and long arm expertise.  As usual, Jan’s having too much fun to leave.

Tonight she took all those quilts in the last post to Karen, the liaison to TLC, the home for the quilts.  This guild meets in Karen’s quilt shop, so all the quilts were held up and admired again.  Then Karen told the group how Jan had approached her to make quilts for TLC and expanded the offer from crib size to bed size, and these were the bed sized quilts.  Then Jan explained how her sister had made 188 crib size quilt tops to be turned into charity quilts, and she had about 80 of them quilted.  Then Karen presented Jan with these five inch squares to go behind my chair.

Then Jan pulled up Cup on the Bus and everyone gathered around and read the last post.  They all looked at the empty drawer full of kitty.  Then everyone present said they would bring another 100 five inch blocks to the next meeting to go behind my chair.  And other long arm ladies said bring some of those tops that still need quilted, we’ll do them.  Can you believe it?

TLC

My sister’s new quilt donation project is Transitional Living Center, actually two group homes in Medina County.  They house ninety six severely and profoundly mentally retarded adults.  I don’t want to imagine being the caregiver there, the pain and the joy, day in, day out, a career that probably does not span the life of one of the residents.  What comfort the homes must bring to relatives who remain involved with their children or siblings in the homes.

I just finished quilt top 188 for Jan’s original Pregnancy Care project.  She has “contained the chaos” and finished out six of them into twin bed size to go to TLC, plus one she made.  Three have gone.  She just finished binding  one last night.  I’m almost sorry my hands can no longer control a needle enough to help with the finish needle work.  Almost.  I can still wield knitting needles.  And type.

Jan came back from a guild meeting last week with more donated fabric for the quilts. Apparently this job will never go away. That’s fine. Work is a blessing. Here are the TLC quilts completed.

This drawer used to be filled front to back, top to bottom with five inch squares.  Now a resourceful cat can pull it open and get it.  Not because he needs to, but because he wants to.

Since the containing chaos project is slowing, I’m taking some time to put together a quilt for Caroline, for her new bedroom.  Carol’s bear is guarding the blocks,  paper pieced snowflakes. There will be lots of sashings, but no borders!

Grandma Bear

In the beginning, when Jan and I started our weaving (and spinning) business and then worked on ways to make a living at it, we had help, encouragement and ideas from old hands in show business.  We were befriended by a sewer named Carol who was always ready to help us figure out a 10x10 booth that actually was 6 feet wide and 17 feet long.  She was full of great stories, too, like how to kill your husband and get away with it.  She’d already divorced hers, so she seemed to be past that stage.  She was chronically low on stock and sewed in her motel at night.  She made a sheep door stop that was filled with sand.  When she filled the body she would thump it on the table to settle the sand and flatten the bottom.  A fellow exhibitor complained bitterly about being wakened all night by someone who knocked on his door but wasn’t there when the door was opened.  Carol never fessed up. 

This bear was one of Carol’s products.  She bought used quilts at auctions and antique stores and turned them into teddy bears.  This was in the great long ago when shabby was chic, country was in and old quilts were cheap.  Ten years later we had reason to turn a quilt into teddy bears ourselves, and an acquaintance who wanted to make quilt teddy bears to sell got quite a dose of reality on finding old quilt value had rightfully soared in the market.

When our mom died, almost without giving us any notice, and we started sorting out we pulled so many of her old quilts out of her cupboard.  We reminisced about the beds they had been on.  We came upon one that had been through the wash so often that in many places Grandmother’s Flower Garden flowers were worn through to the 120 thread count sheet Mom frequently used for backing.  We thought of Carol’s quilt bears and decided to use this quilt for Grandma Bears to give to the grandchildren and others who loved mom.  This bear is Jan’s, and lives in her quilt studio.

Grandma Bear's poor old arms and legs only get a feather duster on them:

I think she's pleased with all she surveys.

Mom's Turkey Track Quilts

You may think mom only quilted.  Not so.  She helped dad build everything that got built, which was a lot.  She worked in the garden, which was substantial.  You’ll hear about my brother Mel weeding the strawberry patch with a pick ax, some day.  Or the year she went on vacation and I canned half of her garden’s forty bushels of tomatoes.  After work.  After going to another county to pick them.  Mom canned every tomato in sight and a lot of fruit.  The years there were no fork holes in our peach halves were the years there was a kid or grandkid in house with a hand small enough to fit in a quart jar and place a peach half.  We had grape juice year round from the grape arbors mom and dad planted in the back yard.  Current jelly.  Raspberry jam (to die for!).

But mom always picked up hand work in the evening.  Crochet.  Lace edging for pillowcases and scarves.  Knitting.  Four kids to keep in sweaters, plus the occasional stray neighbor kid.  I remember the quilts most of all.  As wedding gifts for each of her children she made Turkey Track Quilts.  She bought enough of a red print to make a different Turkey Track variation in the same fabric for each of her four children. 

Here is my red Turkey Track quilt, and a matching baby quilt she made for the red crib.  Did I mention mom loved red.  So do I.  These quilts have been passed along to Beth.

She had to eke out Jan’s red Turkey Track with a great yellow; there wasn’t enough of the original left and it could not be matched fifteen odd years later.

These are not Turkey Track, but I’m running out of categories.

Bias cut fabric appliquéd to the background.

 In the ‘70’s we girls in the family embroidered a lot of quilt blocks and mom quilted them.  I made one in purples, my sister-in-law Hazel made one or more.  Mom embroidered this one.

Mom offered to make Beth a quilt of her choice to take to college.  Beth selected a new technique; this quilt is folded fabric to resemble a dahlia.  Mom and Beth quilted it; the petals were lifted and a circle quilted around each row.  The quilting on the back of the petal blocks is concentric circles.

The last quilt mom made was for her granddaughter Michelle, Melvin’s daughter.  Michelle picked out the pattern and the fabric.  It was another new technique for mom, rotary cut pieces and blocks assembled on the sewing machine.  Mom was fascinated.  What she could have done!  She was quite ill when she put it together; Jan had to help her shift the weight of the fabric as the quilt grew larger.  Mom admired it, and said she was sorry she would not live to quilt it.  “Come one, Ma, we’ll help.”  But she ran out of time.  We had it quilted by an Amish family that was saving for a train trip to visit their son in Wisconsin.  Mom would have liked that part, too.

The last lost quilt

Mom liked Sunbonnet Sue quilts.  These are appliquéd doll figures, generally popularized by Kate Greenaway in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  Sue’s round figure and bonnet encompassed head became a popular redwork figure, too, together with equally rolly overall boys.  There are so many Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Boy variations that a Death of Sunbonnet Sue movement had patterns featuring her bizarre death.  Entered in a Kansas show, they were hung face to the wall in protest.  They were a part of an exhibition at the Regan Library, but removed after protest.

Mom’s earliest Sunbonnet Sue wasn’t Greenaway’s round little cherub, but a slightly more mature little girl with a watering can.   This quilt came out of the metal box and Jan attributes it to mom because of the motif, which we came to know well in her later quilts, and all the embroidery detail defining the little girl.

Mom went on to make many, many Sunbonnet Sue’s.  But, these young ladies had slender waists and pantaloons and embroidery detail of watering cans and flowers.  They remind me of the parasol ladies, another variation of appliqué dolls.  I’ve not located a watering can teenage Sunbonnet Sue pattern on the internet, but she existed once, in my mother’s pattern book.  Remember Dick and Jane, Down the River Road?  It was a large cardboard bound primer we used in first grade.  For reading and math.  Mom used mine to file all her clipped out patterns and her tiny waisted Sunbonnet Sue resided there for years.

She made a yellow Sunbonnet Sue for my friend Carol when Carol was married.  Mom made a Sunbonnet Sue for each of her granddaughters.

Beth’s is purple,

Shelly’s is green. 

Michelle’s is blue.  It's in Atlanta, and I don't have a picture of it.

Mom left a set of blocks in a box.  Enough for a quilt for another granddaughter.  Always prepared.

More lost quilts, and one that wasn't

The lost tulip quilt was an exciting find in the metal storage box, but there are more.  Here is a bow tie quilt mom made in the 1930’s and counted gone forever.  Jan likes the yellow thread used for quilting.  I like the prairie point border, carrying along the theme of the bow tie points.

Grandma Troike made this postage stamp quilt.  These blocks literally are postage stamp sized and represent nights and nights of sewing.  Quilts were made to be used.  They might be entered in a county fair and bring their maker a ribbon for workmanship, but that quilt surely went back home to be used on a bed.  The pride of workmanship is so evident in these quilts by my mother and my great grandmother.  I think this quilt is phenomenal!

Our Grandma Troike died in 1956.  I remember both Grandma and Grandpa Troike (who outlived her another decade).  I associate her with the first television in our house; mom bought it with her share of Grandma’s estate. The yellow water lily quilt was put in Jan’s cedar chest in 1956; when it passed from Grandma Troike to mom.

Quilts our mother slept under

We lost four of the last five of Mom’s generation in a year and a half of 1996 to 1998, including Uncle Hank, mom’s brother.  In 1998 Aunt Flo became the last of my parent’s generation. Uncle Hank was married to Aunt Flo.  They lived in Cleveland and their son and daughter-in-law lived in Colorado.    We kept Aunt Flo involved with the family, and drove her to family doings.  It probably was twenty minutes from our house to hers.

One time Jan went to pick her up Aunt Flo had Jan put a large metal case in the car.  When it was opened at our house Aunt Flo explained it had been stored by Grandma Rolf in her attic and contained quilts she believed Grandma Rolf “had made for herself.”  She added she had shown the quilts to a friend who admired one and paid her $200 for it.  We did a lot of tongue biting.  At least she had the courtesy to return the balance to the proper people.

My Grandma Rolf was a fine needle woman, but quilting never interested her.  Her mother-in-law, Grandma Troike, was the quilter, and passed the love and skill a generation to our mother.  The metal box was full of quilts we know were made by Grandma Troike and some early quilts of Mom’s.  The missing quilts that mom slept under and never knew what happened to them.

The Missing Tulip Quilt is fascinating.  It surely was made by Grandma Troike and was on mom’s bed on West 21^st Street.  Mom remarked on the loss of that quilt; she had no idea where it went.  Before we moved here she decided to replicate it, from memory.  Like the great majority of her quilts, the Tulip Quilt is appliqué.  She would trace a pattern onto fabric, cut it out and fell it to a background.  With invisible stitches.  I never mastered invisible stitching.  The needlework gene went to Jan; she’s a beautiful stitcher.

This is Grandma Troike’s Tulip Quilt, The Missing Tulip Quilt,  that was on mom’s bed on 21^st Street. 

The quilting uses a tulip motif.  There are no sashings and the blocks have a red frame.

This is Mom’s Tulip Quilt, reproduced from memory sixty years later. 

The quilting has a tulip motif. Mom used red sashings and a green border strip.  She drew essentially the same tulip for her pattern.  Incredible.

 Mom used it on her bed in this house.