Stages, Part II

So I moved from the cross-stitch stage on to the quilting stage. My New Brunswick grandmother used to make quilts and I cherished one, a Double Wedding Ring,  that she gave me when I was around 18. Grammy belonged to the Women's Institute in New Brunswick; the Institute ladies on Dorne Ridge would get together for quilting bees, producing these beautiful, entirely handmade and handquilted quilts. I longed to make quilts of my own, so I began buying quilting magazines and books and studying various quilt patterns. The first quilt I attempted, though, was way beyond my capability and patience. It was a "Star of Alabama," it consisted of a gazillion pieces, and I cut out maybe 500 of the pieces before I tearfully admitted defeat. Those pieces are still hidden away in a manila envelope somewhere in the guest room.

I realized I needed to start small, with quilt blocks of ten pieces or fewer in their design, so I began again, this time with a Dresden Plate pattern, and moved on from there: Grandmother's Fan, Double Wedding Ring, Hole in the Barn Door.... I favored the classic patterns, and I thought a quilt had to be pieced by hand as well as quilted by hand for it to be considered a true "quilt." (It didn't take me long to get over the notion of hand piecing the quilt, but I continued to quilt by hand, with the quilt layers attached to a large Sears Roebuck quilting frame, for several years. I loved the step of putting the quilt top, batting, and backing layers together, basting them, and attaching the "sandwich" to my quilting frame. Then the hand quilting process, the most time-consuming step began. A quilt typically stayed on the frame for 3 to 6 months, and I would try to find an hour  or thirty minutes at the end of each day to sit down and quilt.

I began to realize, though, that those few who received my quilts as gifts were not impressed that the thing was hand quilted rather than machine quilted. Still I pressed on, turning up my nose at machine-quilted quilts and truly despising tied quilts.

I made many quilts, maybe 20 in all, full-sized, meticulously handquilted, striving for 10 stitches per inch (which is considered the Cadillac of quilting), but usually having to settle for only 8 stitches per inch.

I was so obsessed with quilting that I spotted quilt patterns in floor tiles, in art work, in wall paper designs. Quilting was never far from my mind. One summer, on a trip to Prince Edward Island, my husband patiently tolerated my having to stop at every farm house with a "Quilts for Sale" sign at the end of the driveway. We would stop to chat with the farm lady and admire her beautiful quilts.

One of my quilts appeared on the cover of Quilt magazine, and my modest article on designing quilt patterns appeared in a later issue of the same magazine.

I ate, slept, and breathed quilts. I made queen-sized quilts, standard-sized quilts, lap quilts, crib quilts, doll bed quilts; I joined with friends to make one or two quilts to raffle for fundraisers; I thumbed through quilt magazines in stores and bought most of them; I subscribed to quilt magazines that I especially liked and still have them carefully stacked and stored for "some day."

Alas, within the past year or two, I've begun to ponder the common sense of machine quilting. Why not? A machine-quilted one is still beautiful and still warm, right? I've purchased a quilting foot attachment for my sewing machine and am now waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't think my grandmother would disapprove.

But it was time to move on....