A Few More Quilts

Two quick quilts today for Throwback Thursday. I don't have much information about the first one. I think it might have been a kit quilt. 

Sometime in the 1980's, my sister-in-law asked if I could quilt it. I'm not sure if she made the top or if a relative of hers did or if they both worked on it. I just remember that I jumped at the chance to do the quilting. At that time I was a hand quilter. In fact, it was my favorite part of making a quilt, and I thought of making a top as a way to get to the quilting. So this was the perfect project for me. I do not remember whether I marked the designs or if the top was pre-marked. I've enlarged a bit of the photo so you can see it better. I know it's fuzzy,  but it does show the sort of spirograph style flowers, circles and outlining. Does anyone remember these kinds of quilts and any details about them?

And now, I don't even remember whether I did the binding or not. If so, it was my first (only?) scallop binding. Wow, for a Throwback Thursday quilt, this sure is short on memory. We'll just blame it on young motherhood and the fact that I didn't need to keep track of my work since it was for a family member, not for hire. I gave my quilting as a gift to my SIL that year, (Christmas? Birthday? I don't know). She put it on her oldest daughter's bed, which is the one in the photo. 

I was "hired" by my mother-in-law to make this second quilt. 

The churn dash pattern is one I made (or quilted) often during my tiny quilting career (which you can read about if you click on the "my tiny career" label on the right sidebar). This quilt was to be an anniversary gift for friends of my in-laws. My MIL wanted Delft colors to celebrate the couple's Dutch heritage. While I was making it, I decided to pep it up just a little bit with one red churn dash block, which led to the name of the quilt: Tulip in the Delft--one of the rare times I named my early quilts.The quilting is outlining in all the background fabrics except the red block so that one would poof out a bit. And then I did my signature leafy vine pattern in the border. Here's the back:

I made this quilt in September 1988. It measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/2 inches. 

Well, since this post is short on content, I'll include just one more quilt--one I made for our family room. It still hangs there. 

I've shown lots of mini quilts on my blog over the years, but aside from a couple of tiny pictorial quilts, I've never made a really tiny quilt for us except for this one. It's from a pattern I bought. The folder says it's from Mary Herschleb Designs in Hudson, Wisconsin. The copyright date is 1995, which makes sense, because that is the year we moved to a new house, and my daughter and I set to work painting birdhouses for decoration. It was a fun little quilt to make--paper foundation pieced, with tiny black buttons used to "quilt" it. I used all scraps. Even the background is a variety of prints. I used black embroidery thread to attach the buttons and tied it in bows on the back. Not sure why I did it that way, but there you have it.

Now that I look at it more closely, I guess I did a bit of actual quilting around the yellow border. The birdhouses have long since been packed away (first step toward donation), but the little quilt still hangs on the side of an antique china cabinet in our family room. The quilt measures 13 1/4 by 11 1/4 inches.

Well, that's almost it for my Throwback Thursday posts of my pre-blog quilts. I guess you can tell I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for content about these last ones, but it is good to have them all documented. I have just one more quilt (as far as I can tell) to post about, but I don't have a photo of it, which seems really odd to me, because it's a big quilt. Since the quilt is owned by my daughter and son-in-law, it will not be a problem to remedy that. 

I'm linking up today with Sandra at mmm! quilts for Throwback Thursday. Go there to read her always interesting and delightful post about her own pre-blog quilts and post some of your own if you have any.