Saturday, January 04, 2014

SIGNATURE QUILT

I made up a bunch of these 2" blocks, and took them with me to quilt shows  and to classes and would ask quilt instructors to sign them.  My intent was to make a 20"  miniature signature quilt with the blocks.  The blocks laid around for years, until a few months when I came across them and decided that it was time to finally put them all together.
  In the meantime, I had another project with old photos on fabric that I thought of using with this small quilt.   Kind of like killing two birds with one stone.  But, I couldn't come up with any brilliant ideas for the design so I made about 100 more blocks and put the embroidered saying that I was going to use with this other project into this one. 

Since this saying focuses on female quilters, I took out the two male quilt instructor signatures that I had collected .  When I got the top sewn together, before I could give instructions, it was passed around guild and signed.  Not necessarily a problem, only a couple of the signatures were upside down, and I had to take them out and re-orient them.  Wouldn't have been a big deal but they were, of course, towards the center of the quilt and not on the edge.  And I am just too much of a perfectionist to stand seeing two signatures upside down.

 Anyway, here it is so far.  I'm going to let it hang and 'talk to me' for a while.  I still have a few ideas spinning around in my head about what I can do with this. It will probably end up with a border, and maybe a little more. I still may incorporate the photos with this.  Or maybe I will just leave well enough alone and just finish it.

Signature quilt 28" x 30"


Detail of the embroidery

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful idea! You could do this with your quilting friends - sort of autograph album of your quilting life. Do you remember the quilt that the Woofters had? It was a church fundraiser. The pattern was a sort of starburst and if you gave 50 cents, your name was embroidered outside the center, if 1 dollar, it went in the center. I have always wanted to do a quilt to raise funds for library programs. Make the quilt look like vertical books on shelves, then for a donation the person can choose the title of "their book" and be listed as its author (in embroidery. Finished quilt to be raffled off or displayed in the library. So, "Pride and Prejudice by Brenda Reed" for $10, etc. (THis comment is by your cousin Brenda, but I'm using the "anonymous" option because it's such a hassle every time I try and fail to sign in.)

Brenda said...

Hey. I commented on this. Wonder where my comment went? I asked if you remember the embroidered fund-raising quilt that the Woofters have. Its blocks are red suns (all in embroidery) and if you gave a dollar, your name was embroidered in the center circle. If you gave 50 cents, your name was embroidered on one of the rays. It was to raise funds for a church in the 1930s and now most of the supporters gave gone to glory.