My grandmother Vennie Watson Wicker was a seamstress---I inherited none of her skill---just the remnants of her old sewing machine pictured above. But, I loved quilts, had just quit teaching to have my children and decided I would make my children each a quilt with swatches of cloth from their clothing which I also intended to (and often did) make.
So, I took several classes and decided I really liked the Cathedral Window---it was something I could do watching TV at night and didn't need a quilting frame. As you can see by the squares above, I decided to make them larger when I determined how many I would need to make a quilt.
And, as I made their clothes, I saved swatches.
I even dutifully cut them out ready to get going on that quilt.
The quilt, pictured above with a Kleenex box, never got too far. At one point I'd scaled down my dreams to "I'll make each girl a doll quilt from swatches of her clothes." Obviously, that didn't work either. This quilt isn't even big enough for a Barbie doll. So, I changed my focus---maybe I needed to make a different kind of quilt. . .
So, my first quilting project wasn't too successful. . . I decided maybe I needed to try something else so I took a class in the Log Cabin quilt. My demo square (above) was hand-quilted, but I'd already decided that what was preventing me from finishing my Cathedral Window quilt was the hand-sewing. So, I decided to machine stitch it.
First, I decided on the color scheme--beiges, blue, and cranberry. I spent months just buying up corduroy fabric with the correct shades.
Then, I cut the strips, rolled them with rubber bands and began.
Above you can see the "hand-stitched" square and the machine stitched one. A few years ago, I found 8 squares (including the two above). I decided to make them into throw pillows. This week, I went ahead and did it. . . I'm just a few whip-stitches shy of actually finishing a quilt project. . . 30 years later.
