Throwback Thursday--Snowball quilts

Since it's January (and winter where I live), I thought that for Throwback Thursday Quilt Edition, you might like to see some snowball quilts I made. There's a little story to go with the first one.

In the 1980's and early 90's we lived in a little old bungalow. It hadn't been updated since the 70's, and some of the appliances had seen better days. One of those was a double oven. It looked pretty awful--some of the knobs were missing (we had to turn the stems with pliers and kind of guess at the temperature setting), and the florescent light on it was quirky. During thunderstorms and hot humid weather, it flickered. It wasn't in the budget to replace it, and it was really convenient to have two ovens, so we put up with its quirks. 

The stairway to our bedroom under the eaves started in the kitchen, right next to that oven. Our kids' bedrooms were on the first floor. And our daughter was distressed by thunderstorms, so sometimes at night she would run through the house and up the stairs to our bedroom when she was afraid. She was also afraid of that flickering light, which, as I said, flickered during thunderstorms. She was more afraid of the thunderstorms, so she was willing to run past the oven, but it freaked her out. 

So, what to do? Aha. I had the solution. I would cover the ugly, quirky oven with a quilt!! And that is how the snowball quilt came to be. 

The oven light still flickered, but when it did, it made the pretty colors of the quilt glow. My daughter still didn't like thunderstorms, but it wasn't quite so scary to run through the kitchen. And the quilt hid all the quirkiness of that oven. I hung it on a little curtain rod so I could take it down easily when I needed to bake something. We don't live in that house anymore, but the quilt is still on display, now in the entryway from our garage to our house. I made this quilt in 1986 on my featherweight sewing machine. It's cotton with polyester batting, and is hand quilted with cotton thread. It's about 23 by 38 inches.

I enjoyed making that quilt so much, that I made another one of the same pattern a few years later after we moved to a new house (I don't remember the exact date, but it was after 1995).

During the winter and spring months, it hangs at the bottom of our stairway to the second floor. It's about 24 by 28 inches.

Hmm, winter light is pretty good for taking pictures on the floor in my hallway. 

I'm linking up today with My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday.