Several weeks ago I did a trunk show of my quilts at the Mariner's Quilt Guild. As I went through my quilts, deciding what to take from an almost 39 year "quilting career" I came across some favourites from many years ago.
Windowpane" (machine pieced and hand quilted) for Kate, my first quilt after many pillows and wallhangings. I started small, I didn't want to get discouraged. This was made in 1973, there weren't any quilt stores here then, I bought fabric wherever I could find it. Remember Woolco? They had one of the largest fabric departments around and a few cottons. This pattern came from an early magazine MacCall's Quilting. The quilt is starting to show it's age. It has survived a crative daughter who loved to draw (with markers) in bed! It has kept 2 rough and tumble grandsons cosy and is now frequently found wrapped around the base of a Christmas tree. I love seeing it being used, worn and all.
Amish Pinwheel (machine pieced and handquilted)was made in 1987 after having worked through the exercises in Roberta Horton's Amish Adventure book I made this quilt. In keeping with Amish style I used several different blacks (at one point I had swatches of 27 different blacks!). I loved making this quilt. There is something wonderful about pinwheels. While I was making this quilt, Kate put her name on it, she loved it and it has been graced a bed in her home ever since. I must go back to the Amish style. I still have a good collection of plain fabrics.
Underwater, a small wallhanging (machine pieced and handquilted) in the style of the traditional pattern Chinese Coins. I have used this pattern before. Again I found this in Kate's collection! Good thing she lives close by.
I loved sharing my quilts with the quilters at the Mariner's QG. It was a good exercise to go through, putting the quilts in a bit of order chronologically for the first bit then by type - applique, contemporary and bed quilts and I finished with a few WIPS. It also gave me a chance to take some new digital photographs of the quilts.