My latest quilt project is finished and has been on an outing already. Loving Blues rode with us to 7th Street Salvage today. Coincidentally, perhaps, everything we liked was either blue or white.
Catherine graciously permitted me to pose my quilt in several spots, and oh, what fun we had! Blues posed on a mantel,
on a group of bathtubs (love the blue oars, too),
on a dry sink (I’m really in love with that pump!),
and outside on a precious little structure. Those blue tin tiles are fabulous everywhere, aren’t they?
Once home, Blues posed with the treasures we brought home. The blue sphere is a duckpin bowling ball. The pins and balls on display reminded Jim of playing this game at Indian Springs State Park during his childhood. The coloring on this ball meant that it was coming home with us! (and yes, those are blue metal tiles you see in the corner.)
The sun was out for a few minutes, so we let Blues swing in the breeze.
Yes, the vest I am wearing had scraps that found their way into this quilt, too.
Quilt details: It measures 40” x 60” finished.
This has memories stitched together, some fabrics held my memories, some held memories of other hands, other lives. All fabrics were either vintage linens I had purchased, many of them overdyed in indigo, or bits of clothing from my closet and Jim’s.
There are fabrics from several of Jim’s shirts, some from shirts of mine. The V is made from a homespun cotton fabric I bought at Elco Antique Market in the 1980’s, my mother made a jumper for me and I wore it for years. Now some of that precious find lives in this quilt.
I changed the name. That earlier post was called Loving Hearts, and I thought that would be the finished title. But, no, the quilt said it was about Loving Blues. Ok. The label is a big heart cut from an overdyed linen tablecloth remnant with beads added.
Like memories that vary; some bring smiles, some bring tears; these fabrics differed, too. Some light weight linen from my breezy summer shirts was soft and stretchy. Others, like the ticking used to make the letter “E” and the handwoven toweling used for the “L”, were thick, made to be durable for centuries. That made quilting interesting. I chose a meandering vine with hearts.
And the pins and silicon tips I mentioned in this earlier post – they are great! I feared that they might make maneuvering the quilt under the sewing machine a bit trickier, but, no problem! And the pinching motion necessary with safety pins, which is hard on arthritic hands, is gone.
