I love participating in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival because it gives me an opportunity to highlight some favorite quilts from when I first started blogging and had very few readers. This quilt has a sad story with a happy ending, which I am just going to copy here from my original post in 2009.
This was the first quilt I made from vintage fabric. The prints are more 40’s and 50’s so the colors are brighter than some of my other quilts, and it’s entirely hand pieced, which is unusual for this pattern since it’s an easy pattern to sew on the machine. When I began to seriously quilt again about 8 years ago, I wanted to hand piece everything. When it came time for the quilting, I did a couple of rows and decided I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the piecing. I thought about the church ladies in Ohio who had finished the quilting on my first quilt, Morning Glory in the 70’s (and several quilts for my mother and mother-in-law), and decided to contact them. Mrs. H responded that her group was still quilting and they would be pleased to finish my quilt. I packed up the quilt and mailed it the next day. About a month later I got it back and was so excited to take a look.
Well, friends, you would not have believed what I found. The poor church ladies must have been really old by then because the quilt was a complete mess — the stitches looked like a child had done them, there were really dark pencil lines from tracing the flower template, and the muslin back was covered with little blood stains. I was devastated! After I recovered from the shock, I started the process of taking out all of their quilting and doing it over — one block at a time. Here’s what I used: seam ripper, tweezers, a little cup of diluted Oxyclean, Q-tips, and a hairdryer — it took about 6 months to complete. The good thing that happened was that I began to enjoy hand quilting, which is now my favorite part of the quilt-making process.
Mrs. H and her friends were paid, and I never told them that I was unhappy with the result. They had done such beautiful work when they were younger, and it was sad that their vision had obviously deteriorated.
I discovered after this quilt was done that one of my pieced blocks and two of the quilted flowers are turned the wrong direction. I couldn’t really fix the pieced block, but I didn’t change the flowers either which is kind of strange since I’m usually sort of a perfectionist about this type of thing. For some reason, it just doesn’t bother me at all.
9-Patch and Snowball
Martha Dellasega Gray, 2001
hand pieced, hand quilted
70″ x 80″
Your quilt is beautiful. Such a shame that the quilting done by the ladies was not up to snuff but I’m glad you decided to remove the quilting and start fresh. I think it was well worth the effort because you now have a wonderful quilt!
Oh, Martha – what a beautiful quilt! And such a story behind its coming to life with your quilting. It is fabulous!
I love this quilt so much, and the story just adds so much to it – I’m very glad you grew to love hand quilting, it’s my favorite part!! Especially in winter, lol!
Great quilt and great story! Thanks for sharing it with us.
Love the hand quilting, that is my favorite thing along with hand appliqued. I had a customer who unsewed a machine quilted piece, slowly, carefully and then I requited it for her. It was worth it as I had seen the first version about 8 years ago. She said she loved the top so much that she had to do something about it because she wanted to use it and just was so unhappy with the original work.
I can’t see anything wrong. Your quilt is beautiful. That is a most interesting story to go along with your quilt.
I have a quilt that I paid someone to machine quilt. My heart dropped when it came back. But I haven’t the heart to take out the machine stitching. I’ll use it and consider it a lesson learned….
Oh my goodness! Your quilt is so beautiful and just outstanding! Very sad the ladies had a hard time with it but I must say, you really did a wonderful job!!
I Love this quilt!! It’s a treat to see all those beautiful vintage fabrics used in such a lovely pattern. It’s such a sad story of the quilting but I’m happy you’ve been able to redo it.
Beautiful quilt! I have some quilt blocks that were probably made in the 50s but a lot of the fabrics are old feedsack material. They were obviously made by an elderly quilter for the same reasons you gave. The pieces weren’t matched up well and there are big blood spots on quite a few of them. I’ve just had them put back because it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to take them apart and I don’t know if I could get the bloodstains out after this many decades. At the same time, I just can’t bring myself to get rid of them!
What a lovely quilt and a sad/happy story! That must have been quite the jolt, and I’m glad you were able to fix it.
What an interesting story. The quilt turned out just great- that must have taken an enormous amount of patience to rework it.
Beautiful quilt with delicious piecing, the flower quilting is so sweet in the centers.
What a story your quilt has! I think hand quilting is my favorite part of making a quilt also. Good luck at the festival!
Love your scrappy quilt. So sad about the problems getting it quilted, but it was worth fixing for sure.:)
Truly, this was a labor of love! What a story. And thank goodness for the happy ending– it turned out beautifully!
Wow, what a fabulous quilt. It is stunning ! Thank you for sharing it and your story.
I’ve looked at this numerous times since you first posted it. I loved it then and I love it now.
Oh what a gorgeous quilt! And the story to go with it is precious. I love that you put these sweet ladies feelings before this beautiful quilt and didn’t tell them what happened. I’m happy to hear you were able to fix it. The fabrics in this quilt are fabulous. I love scrap quilts.
So beautiful!! I love the quilting and the pretty prints!! And, glad you were able to fix it up, poor ladies! 😉 xo Heather
I absolutely love this quilt. And, I’m new to blogs and sites. Does anyone know where I may find this pattern please?
I found this pattern :http://delawarequilts.com/Projects/Yearly/9PatchSnowballs.pdf
Love this quilt. I’m a hand quilter too. So relaxing, especially on winter nights. Your story is wonderful! wish there was a pattern or kit. I too love 30’s fabric.