ancient history

Earlier today, I sent a photo of my first quilt (1974) to a friend. Yep, it's sort of ugly.  But this spiderweb scrap quilt bears an eerie resemblance to some of the spiderweb quilts being made in the Modern resurgence of quilt making. In those days, I loved using muslin in my quilts - so yes, there is a lot of (almost) white.  While you can't see it from the photo above, you can see from the detail that I really did use other fabrics when I ran out.  Needless to say, the fabric choices in 1974 left something to be desired.

 Of course, we made cardboard templates, added ¼" before we cut them out with scissors, and made a different size template for each strip.  Today, the spiderweb is a string quilt, pieced on newspaper -- much less labor intensive,more random, and more fun.  Nonetheless, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.    Here's one I swiped from Pinterest; you can find lots more examples there.

Then I remembered that I used to make a log of baby quilts. In the day before digital cameras, I shot them (poorly), had them developed, and put the photos in a little album.  I had come across the album when I was cleaning up this room and tonight sent me scampering to find it and scan in the photos from 1997-1999. I thought I'd share a few of them with you as I look at them for the first time since those early days. These blocks were experiments: I would make random blocks just to see whether I liked them, and I would play with different color combinations.  Even then, I was throwing them into a box and when I needed to make a baby quilt, I pulled some out and went to work.  

I love this one the best: it was the first, and I was going to give it to my first grandchild.

But I didn't -- and I'm not sure where it is now.  Most of these fabrics were from my grandmother's blanket covers made with scraps from the dress factory whee she worked in the 1940's.

  I have absolutely no memory of this one: I wonder whose baby I made it for. This and the one above could easily have been made today. All that negative space - LOL.

 Oh, yes - I loved making this one: what a challenge!  The fabrics, again, were all my grandmother's leftovers.  The top left white fabric with the blue & red circles was from an apron she had made.  don't know who got this one, either.  The photo says 1997. I would not have used the blue sashing today, but it was probably for a boy.  

 There were some other interesting pieces, but I'll share them with you in the next post. Meantime, it is 2:am and if I am going to make my 11:am appointment in the morning, I had better turn out the lights and scamper.