31 years ago I made this quilt for my friends, the ones we just visited in Washington. They paid me for it, at the time, neither of us had much money, so they paid for the material and then some. I didn’t make it for the money. The fact that they paid for the material meant I could make it at all.It is a queen size quilt, they no longer use it on their bed since they now have a larger bed as well as a different color scheme. This is very 80’s, the southwest color influence.hThery have been taking very well care of it, the quilt is in excellent shape.Here is the block I used, a modified Ohio Star, no sashing, so the pattern blends.My binding is much larger than traditional binding. I learned how to quilt from Quilters Newsletter Magazine, which is sadly printing it’s last issue this fall. I bought the fabric in Washington, probably at G street Fabric in it’s original location on G Street. By then I had learned that batting is pretty thin, but I didn’t know how thin the binding is supposed to be. Embroidery has been part of my labels forever. I think this may have been the third full size quilt I ever made. At the time I lived in a nieghborhood called Ramot in Jerusalem. I was hoping our friends would move to Israel as well, hense the request to bring the quilt back. They have stayed in DC, and we moved to California, to my husbands hometown. Life is full of surprises.I’m pretty sure I machine pieced the top. My original quilt (sadly gone) was all made by hand and it fell apart quilckly. I didn’t do heavy quilting here, but I did quilt by hand.My feathers have gotten so much better! This is the back of the quilt, so you are seeing the back of the stitches, pretty impressive if I say so myself.Hand quilting means switching colors is easy to do. I bought the cotton quilting thread along with the fabric. At the time neither were available in Israel. Today things are very different there, there is even a vibrant quilting community.I put together a quilt group, most of us where originally from the US, although Sholmit, the one with the red afro was a native Israeli. I’m on the far right, look how young I was! I also knit that top I’m wearing, some things never change! The woman second from left is Ann, she has since moved to LA as well and we are very good friends.
I don’t remember what we did with the quilt, I know that I made the blcok with the curves, I was into curves from the begining. This post is bringing back so many memories!Here I am, wrapped in the warmth of an old friend.