Planet Nice Crafts

Hello everyone, hope all is well with you. This is a robust post. First of all, the project is complete and no, this is not an April Fools funny. The quilting went smoothly. I kept the pattern simple, following the suggestion in the instructions: stitching around each block, sashing, and background. Then, not following the instructions, I just went around the edge a few times, making a big rectangle. I chose this strategy because the top is so complex that I thought any additional intricacy would not have much of an impact. In fact, you really don’t see the quilting from the top, the best shot is this close-up of the back. The final step was to bind the edges of the quilt, and since I was unfamiliar on how to proceed, I followed an excellent Craftsy tutorial. First, I made a gigantic strip of the binding fabric. Finally, the binding was attached to the edge of the quilt on the front by machine and on the back by hand. Luckily, there was a bit of sunshine yesterday so ...

Well, the snow has melted and there has been some beautiful weather but the Winter/Spring transition is fickle and we are expecting a winter-like storm tonight and tomorrow. Before I give a status report on the quilt, I want to summarize some tidbits from my reading on quilt history, namely because I have to return the book in a few hours! From the book Quilts The American Story by Susan Jenkins and Linda Seward: Nice Cover Post-Revolutionary War, a tradition arose for neighborhoods to interact through cooperative labor; tasks included clearing timber, house and barn raisings, and needlework and textile production a la the “quilting bee”. Social gatherings for quilting occurred even on the frontier when possible despite the distances between households. Early industrialization of textile manufacturing created an abundance of cotton prints and therefore, women of all social classes had the opportunity to take up quilting, a sort of democratization. In the 18 th century,...