I recently was the happy recipient of some old quilt tops and a bunch of Quilter's Magazines from the 70's. I am still deciding what to do with all of my bounty! It reminds me of how quilting has changed over the years.
Today, for a few minutes, I was in a modern quilting shop, with loads of beautiful quilting fabrics, fat quarters, threads, books, classroom, and quilting room with long arm quilting machine that could be rented by the hour. Of course there was a plethora of wonderful bright modern quilts hanging on all the walls above the bolts of fabric. Quilting has become a business with it's block of the month clubs, seminars, and kits. One kit that I saw for a double size quilt was $115!!! That was just for the kit! Nevertheless, I loved the shop! I even signed up for some lessons on the long arm quilting machine!
Yesteryear quilting, as I am reminded by all the quilting magazines that the friend gave to me, was a different culture. There was a thing called a quilting bee. This old picture shows what the essence of a quilting bee was, only with a twist. This old picture was taken in Tennessee at the national conference of the American Crafts Council. It shows people gathering to work on a friendship quilt. They are hand quilting a white quilt conceived by long time master quilt teacher, Bets Ramsey. She put it together with appliqued craft symbols on one side and then quilted all the edges herself. She rolled it up and took it to the conference where she allowed some friends to hand draw designs in each of the center squares that she had laid out; then she let attendee quilters quilt it. It was a hit and by the end of the conference, people were actually standing in line to do some of the quilting (they can be seen in the background of the photo.)
'Yesteryear' will be an ongoing article title for my Tuesday blog post. I want to explore crafts and homemaking "the way they were" in the yesteryear. It should be fun! Join me every Tuesday!!!