Victor Should Write a Book

Yes, quilts are a whole lot of geometry - but they are lots of math as well. How many yards of fabric are needed to cut X amount of Y shape? How much fabric is needed for the bias cut binding? How many blocks are needed to get to the specific size of the finished quilt? Think about the precision needed to do a pieced quilt. If a seam if over or undersized by 1/32" and there are say (only!) 144 pieces for one row across the width of the quilt the difference could be as much as 4.5 inches! Just cutting enough of each piece out of the correct fabric is a math project! I know someone who figured out how many quilting stitches she put into he quilt and wrote it on the label!

Wow - that fried my brain just reading it!

Sorry.

Yankee Cat: I make a quilt the other way around. Here's a couple yards of fabric I could put with this other stuff. I find a simple pattern - like Album or Wild Geese that goes with the fabric. and then I roughly lay out the whole thing to see how big its going to be. then I cut the pieces and fit them together. No math quilt.

But I don't "make" quilts. I just use up some fabric that is not suitable for anything else, or that I think might be interesting as a throw or a blanket. I think this is the way most quilts were traditionally made.

Incidentally, here in the South, before the 1850s or so, quilts were made out a single piece of cloth. There was quite a lot of elaborate embroidery, but no piecing.

At the historic house where I worked there was a quilt attributed to "Sarah Brewster" who lived at Plymouth. She was an ancestress of the woman who moved here from N. Carolina in the 1830s. There were several other quilts as well. very few pieced ones.

I shouldn't complain - I do cross-stitch.

The vast majority of quilts made were pieced - they have just been used up over the years. Quilting is a thrifty way to use scraps and worn out garments to provide warmth. Whole cloth quilts were usually reserved for guests and special occaisions as not everyone could afford enough fabric at one time in addition to the fabric required to put clothes on the families backs - whole cloth quilts were a luxary. I'm guessing that you are more likely to see old, whole cloth quilts in the south where the fabric mills were located.

The Sarah Brewster quilt I am referring to was made in Plymouth Colony. It is made from green silk which I would imagine was an imported fabric.

The other whole cloth quilt was made from homespun cotton and it was embroidered in much the same way as the Plymouth Colony quilt. It was made in North Carolina. It was also stuffed with cotton. As I remember the Plymouth Colony quilt was quilted over a filling of something like a wool or cotton blanket.

Yes. Both of these were heirloom quilts, but neither of them was from Alabama. they just wound up here because the descendant families wound up here.

I now have quilt guilt.

Why?

Because of my mother, why else?

Oh, and I was raised Catholic.

Poor Dave. Such an affliction. Do you think its more than that "quilt" rhymes with "guilt"? Actually they are minimal pairs, only one phoneme difference.

I think those are clues to "quilt guilt".

"mother"

"catholic"

?????

I never quilted and poor kids in Asia were cold!

You should have eaten your oatmeal and they would have been warm.

I think there's a 'real men quilt!' website.

You remember too!

Oops, too slow. I was responding to Sharran.

absolutely, Dave.....especially the green stuff that i had and they didn't.

Part of why I'm an overweight middle aged guy is because of all those darn starving kids! ;^)

I send Brussel Sprouts, Balogna sandwiches and mince meat pie to those countries on a weekly basis. Done it for years.

Fruit cake.

Oh, and Beets....

Do any other recovering catholics remember collecting money for the pagan babies?
when your class collected (i think) $5, you got to name it?
the girls always came up with pretty, romantic names, and the boys would come up with the ugliest names they could find...

names for pagan babies? Poor kids, their mom didn't even have a name for them?

Victor - "real men quilt" website - were you serious? There are some very notible male quilters - Michael James being the first one that comes to mind.

No Cat - just kidding!

http://www.geocities.com/ccquilters/menquilt.html

Victor. You may be remembering things you don't know about.

gloria

Thanks for the link!

Oh that's hilarious, Gloria! I did not try a search. Maybe a subliminal thing!

I just searched ebay and nothing showed up - so what does that make it? My theory is if it is not on ebay it is very rare or too many and not worth putting on ebay. So you decide.

Now Victor I am not trying to swat you.

Beyond the Ebay horizon.

Quilting is one of the things I hope to learn to do in this blessed state of retirement.

That "starving children" guilt trip wasn't just for Catholics! "Eat your Spam!!!".... And "the Vienna Sausages are getting cold, along with the slimy okra and tomatoes!"

EEEwwwwwww.... who were they kidding.....those starving children in China (that's what was bandied about in our neighborhood for Catholics and Protestants alike) wouldn't like that slop any more than we did!!!!

I used to tell my mother, 'Then send them this!'

Way to be assertive, Victor!!!!

Then I'd get slapped.

Is your head flat on one side???

I alternated my seat to prevent that.

as well you SHOULD have, MISTER !
I have a feeling we so wouldn't have been allowed to play with you.

Actually, I was the best eater of the three of us. My brother and sister were real pains. I ate most things, including all my veggies!

You would have fit right in in my 'hood, Victor!! I now live diagonally across from the home where the kid lived that talked me into playing "mumblypegs". I had to stand on a spot and let him throw a knife between my two feet. He missed and I got a knife stuck in my thigh.....my sister (a real tomboy then) fainted from the blood. I still have the scar. Speaking of memories from the 'hood - we spent days of summer fun fishing from this old dock on the river. Yesterday, they tore it down to build a new, fancy dock. Sniff. I can accept it though, because it was getting very dangerous for the kids. Not many of them play at the River like we did though.