I've told you already that The Frugal American Housewife is a great book. Paragraph one told me to save stuff, paragraph two told me to knit, and paragraph three tells me to make quilts. Now what more could you ask?
Mrs. Child writes, "In this point of view, patchwork is good economy. It is indeed a foolish waste of time to tear cloth into bits for the sake of arranging it anew in fantastic figures; but a large family may be kept out of idleness, and a few shillings saved, by thus using scraps of gowns, curtains, etc."
I don't exactly know what she means about "fantastic figures," but I'm taking this paragraph to mean that making quilts is a good thing. That's all I need to know.
I started my first quilt (an old-fashioned flower garden design) before Jim and I were married. I used my mother's quilt for a pattern, and since she used pink as the outline color, I used green....mint green (That was my idea of rebellion). As it happens, I don't much like mint green anymore, but that's not why it took me 40+ years to finish it. The first snag I ran into was that I set the blocks incorrectly, and they went off at a slant. After a couple of years, I took the blocks apart and went at it more carefully. I got the top all finished many years later (I didn't work at it constantly, you understand) but then I lost track of it. One day I was at my mother's house and she was going through a box of stuff that she thought she should get rid of. She pulled out my quilt top, and said "I don't know when I did this one. I don't remember it at all." I said, "That's because you didn't do it. That's the one I made." By this time I was a member of a church where there was a quilting group, and I gave it to them to quilt. After I got it back, it took me awhile to get the edging on, but the quilt is now complete....and it is so precious to me that I won't use it. Now isn't that the pits! I'll bet Mrs. Child used her quilts!
Mrs. Child writes, "In this point of view, patchwork is good economy. It is indeed a foolish waste of time to tear cloth into bits for the sake of arranging it anew in fantastic figures; but a large family may be kept out of idleness, and a few shillings saved, by thus using scraps of gowns, curtains, etc."
I don't exactly know what she means about "fantastic figures," but I'm taking this paragraph to mean that making quilts is a good thing. That's all I need to know.
I started my first quilt (an old-fashioned flower garden design) before Jim and I were married. I used my mother's quilt for a pattern, and since she used pink as the outline color, I used green....mint green (That was my idea of rebellion). As it happens, I don't much like mint green anymore, but that's not why it took me 40+ years to finish it. The first snag I ran into was that I set the blocks incorrectly, and they went off at a slant. After a couple of years, I took the blocks apart and went at it more carefully. I got the top all finished many years later (I didn't work at it constantly, you understand) but then I lost track of it. One day I was at my mother's house and she was going through a box of stuff that she thought she should get rid of. She pulled out my quilt top, and said "I don't know when I did this one. I don't remember it at all." I said, "That's because you didn't do it. That's the one I made." By this time I was a member of a church where there was a quilting group, and I gave it to them to quilt. After I got it back, it took me awhile to get the edging on, but the quilt is now complete....and it is so precious to me that I won't use it. Now isn't that the pits! I'll bet Mrs. Child used her quilts!
2 comments:
Looking at quilts made by human hands (especially your hands) gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling. :)
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