When This You See, Remember Us

"When This You See, Remember Us" was the special exhibit of friendship quilts, album quilts, memory quilts and signature quilts I put together for our April quilt show. Other guild members loaned their special quilts to add to the ones I've made. Memory quilts are one of my specialties and each quilt had a story to tell.

Top picture: At the beginning of the display I shared a number of smaller quilts. You may recognize the "Orange Scribble quilt I posted earlier this spring. Draped over the top of the information board is a small fan quilt I made from a single large block. I discovered this block while in Paducah for the AQS show several years ago. By adding borders and hand quilting it, I turned it into a doll quilt.

Center picture: In the heart of the exhibit is the hand pieced and hand quilted grandmother's flower garden, an heirloom in excellent condition belonging to Janice Berry. She said her grandmother Orlena Matilda Ford Hurdle pieced it in the 1940s and that it holds strong memories for her. Orlena hand-pieced because she and her husband ran a movie theatre in Milan, Missouri where her grandmother spent a lot of time in the booth selling tickets. The hand quilting was done by a local church group.

The small quilt featuring a circle of quilters belongs to Joan Beyette who told me each of the figures represents the members of her small quilt group who meet weekly forming a circle of quilters.

The large Lone Star in the center is a memory quilt I created and called Richmond, 1898. I used a variety of reproduction fabrics to make my new quilt look old. In my imagination my maternal grandmother, Marie Coghill, was working on this traditional star in 1898 at her house in Richmond, Virginia. Once she finished the top, she probably would have hand quilted her quilt, although there are surviving quilts from this time period where the maker skillfully machine quilted her quilt on a treadle machine. I designed and machine quilted this lone star.

Bottom picture: These signature blocks were given to me by a friend who discovered them here in a Northwest Arkansas thrift shop in February. Anyone know the name of this block? I hurried to create a top with the fifteen blocks in the group, adding the vintage block I cut in half to finish the upper corners. I was determined to finish it for this display. The blocks were a range of sizes so I used "coping strips" on each block to even out the size problem. I chose a very busy fabric for the coping strips and for the sashing to disguise the varied block sizes. The black cotton sateen added a crispness I appreciated. I machine quilted it on the 1971 Bernina 830 Sally/Buffy LeBeouf gave me several years ago. (What a friend!) The stack of friendship blocks were meant to be sewn together and be viewed side by side, so I called this quilt Side-by-Side Friends.