It's that time again . . .

Blogger's Quilt Festival!  Yay!  And a big Thank You to Amy for putting together and hosting this fun on-line event again. 

Welcome to Indigo Threads, if this is your first visit here.  I hope you'll enjoy my entry into the BQF, and that you'll visit again!



Amish Center Diamond
28 inches square

 My entry into the BQF is in the "an oldie but a goodie" category.   I made this waaay back when, in 1988 according to the label I actually made and put on.  (That's a miracle in itself!)  That's 23 years ago!  Wow, I can't believe it's been that long.

I had been quilting about 8 years by then, and Roberta Horton's book about Amish quilts, "An Amish Adventure", published in 1983, had gotten me excited about Amish quilts and their use of color.  I made two quilts in the Amish style,  a smaller, simpler wallhanging for my Mom and a doll quilt, before I decided to do this one. 

When I started this quilt, it was before rotary cutters and the nifty plastic rulers that we have now.  This was all measured with a yardstick and marked with a pencil, then cut out with scissors.  Practically the Dark Ages!  But somehow, it all fit together.

Good cottons in solids were hard to find then, so the purple and the black are both poly-cotton, I think.  I used a polyester batt, which was all I could find then.  Now, the black is suffering from some migration of the batting through the top.  It's not super visible, fortunately.

It took me 2 years to hand-quilt this quilt.  When I was working on the black borders with black thread, it was so hard to see what I was doing that I could only quilt on this sitting in bright sunlight.  Nighttime was too difficult to see to quilt - again, long before Ott lights came along.  I quilted this without a hoop or a thimble, as I never got the hang of using either.  I felt like I had better control of my stitching without the hoop.  And whatever finger I put the thimble on just seemd to end up sticking up in the air, well away from the quilt top!  LOL 

This quilt is starting to show it's age now.  I had it hung on a wall for a long time, and thanks to the bright California sun, it has faded some.  But it's still one of my favorites.  This was the best and most extensive hand-quilting I ever did.  Now, I quilt either on my Bernina or "by check" (longarmer).  I love the feel of the quilting - it's so soft and cuddly.  I suppose this quilt is my "heirloom" quilt, just based on the work and love I invested in it.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It's so fun to see everyone's quilts and read their stories!