Monday, March 29, 2010

It's spring, it's springI

Someone I worked with wrote this headline years ago. We mocked him. Then I married him.

Here's a happy spring string quilt. I bought it in the spring, many years ago, when I lived in what felt like a very foreign place, the South. For a midwestern girl, it was not home. Strange accents. Strange ideas. Kinda scary.

I bought this quilt along the roadside in South Carolina. I was going to visit my a college buddy who had landed in a strange place too. South Carolina, with a husband studying to be a chiropractor.

This quilt was hanging on a clothesline. I couldn't have paid much for it, as I didn't have much money to spare then. It measures 70" x 64". The string-pieced bowtie blocks are 7 1/2" x 8" square, with string pieced bowties. The predominant striped fabric is seersucker. It's machine pieced and hand quilted with wonderful rough stitches. The very white seller told me his 90-year-old grandma made it.

It hung on our apartment wall in Zirndorf, Germany when we were first married. It looked so swell with our landlord's gold couch beneath it and light streaming in from the windows. How about those sawtooths along one edge. Isn't it the best!

9 comments:

  1. I love this quilt! It has inspired me to pull out my husband's shirts I have been saving and start something fun!
    Love the sawtooth edge..Only on one edge... love it!

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  2. It is my kind of quilt too..great character.

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  3. And the stripey fabric runs all directions, which makes it so much more interesting. Kathe

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  4. yay, shirts! go Sujata. and yes, isn't it good to see the stripes can run in all directions and still work? ah....

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  5. Inspiring! I love the little bits of floral added to the mix. Thanks!
    LeeAnn

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  6. This motivates me to get to the machine. You had a great eye early on!

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  7. Deb recien la he encontrado, he recorrido su blog desde hoy al inicio, quiero darle gracias por el rescate de antiguos quilts, por los consejos de aprovechamiento de los restos, por la delicadeza con que habla de los quilts, un abrazo de una quilter novata, desde la lejana Neuquen, en la republica Argentina.

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  8. courtesy of google.translate.com:

    Deb I have recently found your blog I have visited the home today, I thank you for the rescue of old quilts, for the advice of exploitation of the remains, the delicacy with which you talk about the quilts, a hug from a novice quilter from the distant Neuquen in Argentina.

    Thank you, Marta! it is wonderful to be able to share quilts with you, so far away!

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  9. Quilts like this kept me quilting for years and years.

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