Grandma's Farm & Garden-Patch Quilt

I have finished my quilt! Such a sense of satisfaction! This was my first time trying to make a quilt since my kids were babies back in the 1980's, and the very first time I have ever quilted one by hand. I have been wanting to try out my quilt frame, ever since I found it in a yard sale a few years back, and thought this project perfect for my first attempt. 

At the end of March of this year, I began this project and am happy to say it went pretty well, with very few hiccups. Not wanting to overdo it, I started with a simple lap-sized quilt, it turned out to be 40 1/2" x 45 1/4". To say I am just tickled with how it turned out would be a gross understatement.

This project actually started when I bought this sadly dilapidated panel in a rickety frame at Goodwill several years ago. It was one of those machine cut kits, dating back to the early 2000's, I think, that someone had poorly ironed onto fabric. It was coming all apart and the pieces were falling off. It was super cheap so I decided to rescue it. I had no idea at the time what I was going to do with it, so it languished in my, "do it later" stash.

Towards the end of March of this year, I ran across it, and thought it was high time I did something with it. The more I looked at it, the more I thought, with a few alterations, it would make a great Center Medallion quilt. I didn't much care for the green floral fabric it was edged with, so I removed it. Then I put it on my embroidery frame, stretched it nice and snug, and carefully stitched the pieces all back on, only rearranging them in a layout I felt was better balanced. I used decorative embroidery stitches, French knots, and contrasting threads, to try to help the piece look a bit more three dimensional.

Going into my fabric stash, I thought I had some fabric that I could use that dated from that same period, which might just work for this project?! Sure enough I found these fun and funky fabrics, that I felt were far better suited to the center piece, than the rose bud fabric from before. I cut them into long strips and attempted to sew them together. This was when my first and only big hiccup occurred. My sewing machine just coughed a fit and refused to sew. Grant you my "Old Beulah" is over 40 and still has all of her original parts. Apparently she was not happy with being stored for as long as she had been. With the aid of my son, Andrew, who helped give her a complete oiling and tune up, including adjusting her drive belt for me, she was soon humming a very happy tune. 

The checkerboard fabric was a dream of course, and we shall not inject a sour note here by going into just how tedious and troublesome that sunflower patterned fabric was. It was a humdinger, I tell you.  As I had a limited amount, I could not align it all as I would have liked, so it is what it is. I was hoping also to not have to piece any of the edges but alas, the fabric simply was not long enough, so it had to be pieced. But hey, I do love finding pieced pieces amongst my old quilts, so hopefully in the future this will delight another soul just like myself.

In just a few days I had the strips all sewn on, first the sides then the tops, and Andrew was happy to hold it up so I could get some pictures of it. Boy oh boy does my camera hate those red/white and green/white checked fabrics. I will admit it is a bit dizzying to look at, and if I had, had a bit more of the sunflower fabrics I might have made them wider, but then I wouldn't have been able to put it on my shorter quilt poles. My quilt frame comes with both long and short poles and I thought it best to keep to the short poles for now, until I can find a better place than the dining room to set up my frame.

Next it was time to haul in out of the storage shed my quilt frame and set it up. This is the quilt frame I bought at a yard sale a few years ago. It is a Jasmine Heirloom Quilt Frame made of Maple, and is just beautiful. Wouldn't you know tho we looked high and low, we could not find the instructions that had come with it, on how to set it up. It's a good thing both my son and I are pretty good mechanically, or we would never have figured it out. Truth be told it was all very straight forward, and aside from having to sand one of the pole ends down a bit, so it would fit smoothly in its proper holes and rotate, it all went together without a hitch. I think the pole swelled a little from being stored in a barn for years.

We soon had it set up. The only thing I changed was the fabric that was attached to the poles. They had some garish green patterned stuff stapled on that smelled like mouse berries, and had no dimension lines on it. I had an old black bed sheet so I cut some strips, sewed white dimension lines onto it and stapled it in place. This makes it so much easier when you are pinning your quilt onto the frame to get it on straight. See all those fancy knobs, they are wonderful screw bolts for tightening and loosening your poles as you go along.

This quilt frame can be set up as a two bar or three bar system. I decided to try using the three bar, as you can see here. The backing and inside batting are pinned together on the front and middle bars and rolled up on the middle bar, until the slack is taken up. Now it has a tendency when rolling up the back and batting layer, to tighten up the batting faster than the backing, leaving drooping slop in the backing layer. So my solution was to put a large metal curtain rod onto the batting and evenly press down on the batting so as to keep the layers even. This worked really well. The top is then pinned to the front and back bar, right side up, and rolled around the back bar, until the slack is taken up.

Before I pinned on my quilt, I had marked the center of my fabrics at both ends of the quilt. This is were the white thread I had stitched onto my black fabric came in real handy. I could easily see the center line I had stitched in white, so it was easy to line up the center of my quilt. I had sewn the length of the black fabric with once inch increments so could easily line up the edge's of my fabric to pin it on.

Normally you would pin on your quilt with the edges on each end equal, but I had to complicate things by wanting to do my quilt as my mother and grandmothers before me had done. They always turned the back of the quilt up over the outer edge and stitched it down, thus saving themselves the added trouble of sewing on bias binding. This is why as you can see above, my quilt is inset, thus allowing for that turning when completed. This made for a more difficult pinning on at the front edge, and I had to undo it several times to make sure it was aligned straight with the back fabric. This is one of the most critical steps, because if you get this wrong, your whole quilt will be wonky. Having never done this before, I think all in all it doesn't look too bad.

Finally after some effort I have it all pinned and rolled and ready to go. It was at this point that another minor hiccup occurred. We could not find the clamps that are supposed to go on the sides to hold tension on the side of the quilt. No amount of hunting on our parts managed to dredge up those crazy pressure clamps. All was not lost however, as I remembered having a few smaller plastic spring clamps that I had used in the past for crafting. We soon found them in their craft tote, and with the aid of some fine hemp twine, we soon had them attached and ready to go. It wouldn't have halted the project, but it is so much nicer to have a slight tension on the edges of you quilt to help keep it aligned.

Here I am with my threads all lined up, my phone playing one of my favorite Christian singing groups, "Take Three", which I have posted to my blog for your enjoyment. Listening to them is a delight, and brings back such warm memories of my childhood. I thought it the perfect music to stitch to, and it was.

Doing this project so reminded me of all those times quilts were put into an old frame that was clamped to our kitchen table at our home when I was a kid. My Grandma, Mom, and often several friends and my siblings would be roped into sitting down to the old quilt frame and tacking the quilt. My mother and maternal grandmother never hand quilted their quilts they always tacked them, and the edge was finished by turning the back over onto the front and hand stitching it in place. This was in the 1970's and their quilts were a kaleidoscope of color. No set pattern that I remember just crazy colored squares, usually six inches in size, jumbled haphazardly into a quilt. They were members of the Dorcas Society and these were strictly utility quilts, to be given out for free to those in need. There was no time for fine stitches and fancy edges. The blocks were made from old donated clothes that were beyond repair.

Here I am showing a nifty system I used to have fewer knots. I am able to use much longer lengths of thread this way, and don't have to re-knot my needle so often. I divide my thread in half and wrap one half of it around a pin, so when I start to sew there isn't any knot at all. The pin holds the starting point thread in place. I was having to sew starting from the middle of the strips anyway, to ensure they didn't pucker, so I thought this way of doing it would be worth a try. Aside from the thread wanting to tangle a bit because of the long length, things went really smoothly.

Here you can see where I came to the corners of the strips. I pulled the thread back out of my needle and wrapped it around a pin. This way I could work my way back and forth on the horizontal lines of the quilt, and then go back and work the vertical lines, putting my needle back onto the thread as I went. This made it easier for me to work from the center to the outsides. Now I don't think you have to do it this way, if the quilt is not a center medallion like the one I was doing?! I don't know enough about quilting on these frames to know if all quilts need to be worked from the center to the outside? I just thought I could work mine smoother if I did it that way, and it seemed to work. As you can also see from these pictures, I was smoothing and pinning ahead of my stitching, to keep everything aligned and as smooth as possible.

After I got as far as the center I stopped sewing the sides and rolled the center medallion to its top and began doing all of the close work there. I outlined every plant, tree, the barn, the lady, the bunny, the chickens, I do mean everything. Then because the sky wasn't looking so good, as it looked rather flat and blank to me, Andrew suggested I put in a cloud, but I just couldn't get one to look right and fit, so I stitched in some birds instead. He and I both think that did the trick. By the way the flower at the top right is actually three dimensional, because the original kit plant was just a large stalk with nothing else. I stitched lavender and yellow fake flower petals on, and presto, an iris was born. A bit out of scale but who's judging?! ha ha ha

Here after a lot of hard work is my quilt. It is off the quilt frame and pinned and ready for the final push. The hand sewing of the turned up border. Here you can see some of my stitching on the back. I stitched in the ditch with matching green thread and it is really hard to see. The camera didn't like the sheep fabric back anymore than it like the checkerboard front. I can tell you tho, it is hard to see my stitches ever when holding this quilt, so I am not surprised the camera could barely pick it up. I do like invisible stitches. I measured when I was through and I stitched seven and eight stitches to the inch. I think I can be pretty proud of that. I have large hands and it is no easy thing for me to make small stitches, but perseverance pays off.

Here is my quilt all finished and done. The contrasting checkerboard turned out really fun, and the dark green sheep fabric back, when turned over the edge to the front, just finished the whole pattern repeat exactly as I had hoped it would. I started in the 1st of April and finished it the 12th of May. With sewing just a few hours a day, or as often as I could, I was able to get this done. I was actually surprised at how fast it went, as it looked like such a monumental task when I started.

Here is the back of my quilt. The fabric pattern is white sheep in a green meadow with red/white checkerboard hearts. I was so glad I had this in my fabric stash, and that I had actually bought over a yard of it, because back in the early 2000's I was into buying fat quarters for projects and not full yard goods. Because of my using everything from my stash, including a leftover piece of 1/4 inch cotton batting, this quilt basically cost me nothing but the price of the center piece. Even my thread was left over from other projects.

Here I will close, my task is complete, even to a small label with my name and the date on it, sewn to the back of my quilt. Oh yes, there is a secret in this quilt, that only the future can reveal. Inside the border, on the top and the bottom, I have written messages, so that when the edges wear thin and the threads wear out, someone may read what I have written there, and remember a quilter and her very  first ever, hand quilted quilt.

May the Lord Bless you and keep you, as he has surely blessed me while making this quilt. 

Thank you Lord for all of the wonderful memories of quilts from the past, and for the making of more quilts in the future.