Across our sewing table - 12 August 2010

Thank-you for sharing your photos of family tree quilts, old timey-quilts ~ each a treasure created by loving hands. Some of you are pretty darned good quilters, too!

These folks who posted links via Facebook or email :

• Roger Moffat sends a link to his Family History Quilting, about a quilt made for his Aunt Jean's 70th birthday. Note the joint effort of quilters, scanning, photo printing, etc.
• Leslie Ann sends a link to her Treasure Chest Thursday -- The Salt Lake City 14th Ward Album Quilt, 1857  posted at her Lost Family Treasures blog.
• Heather Wilkinson Rojo sent the link to this year's Lowell Quilt Festival starting 12 Aug 2010.

These folks posted photos of quilts by uploading them to our Genea-Quilters group on Facebook.

• Gena Philibert Ortega uploaded a pic of her multi-fabric & well-stitched Crazy Quilt
• Becky Jamison posed with her family photo quilt showing every member of her family from grandchildren to her grandparents. Love those colors, too Becky!
• Tami Glatz uploaded a shot of her family tree quilt made for her Dad, reporting that her sister embroidered the names and dates on all the leaves.
• Tami Glatz  also included a link to her public Picasa Web Album of quilts. You'll find a heart applique quilt made for the wedding of one of Caitie's friends, a baby quilt for Linda's 2nd baby, an Attic Windows baby Quilt for one of Caitie's Swiss babysitters (I'll volunteer to sit!), a delightful Christmas Tree Quilt, a collaboration quilt (look for the "spools" in one of the squares!), and a whimsical Cat Puzzle Quilt using reproduction prints. This girl can quilt!
• Frenette Brown got busy laying out her heirloom quilts and taking pics of them. See the quilt made in 1957 for her wedding by her grandmother. She had to pack this up because her son took the quilt to the beach, of all places! 
• Frenette Brown included a quilt made by her grandmother, a modified Bear Claw design that looks like little May baskets of pink flowers on a field of lavender.
• Frenette Brown explains the 1915 North Georgia multi-pieced star patch quilt was made by her great-grandmother. "This may be the oldest one I have, and the black fabric is rotten. Don't guess it could be fixed, but I have saved it - love the design. [...] It was made by my Great-grandmother, who raised my Father and his 2 siblings after his Mother died. This was in North Georgia, probably around 1915." 
• Frenette Brown shared a predominately Yellow and Lavendar Rose Quilt -- all hand stitched.
• Frenette Brown also added the Tufted Blue & White bedspread shown in the upper right. She explains "This may not be of interest to quilters, but maybe to historians on bedspreads. Dalton, GA. was the start of tufted spreads, A woman invented the single-needle tufting machine- lot of women had one in their homes and sewed designs printed on the sheeting supplied by a company, or made their own. This was made by my Mother. This led to machines with many tufting needles, and eventually to carpet-making, and Dalton is considered the 'Carpet Capital of the World' now."
  
  I'm CERTAINLY interested, Frenette, and I am sure other Genea-Quilters will be as well. I never knew about the tufting  patterns and the printed patterned sheet tufting kits. Very kewl!
  
  By the time I was a little girl, one could purchase these tufted spreads. Mine was white on white, and I had one for each of the twin beds in my room. They replaced the yellow "Sunbonnet Sue" quilts my mother had made for me by the local Relief Society. I remember walking under the quilt frames as the ladies did the hand quilting.

Somehow I'll try to keep up with posting the links to things people share with me privately or publicly. Folks have written to ask if hand tatting or crocheted heirlooms might be added to the mix. I say YES! What a wonderful way to honor the handiwork of our ancestors.