The discussion question(s) for this week:
What techniques were popular back when you first began quilting?
Remember . . you can answer them in comments or you can write them down in a journal format or save them in your computer.
Back when I began quilting in the early 80’s, everything was done by hand. We used a sandpaper board, placed our fabric usually wrong side up, traced around the template, then using a quarter inch tool, we drew a second cutting line. We used plain old scissors and cut out the pieces on the cutting line, then hand sewed using the first drawn line.
Once the quilt was done, we hand quilted it. It was in the early 90’s before I ever heard of a longarm machine. Some folks were beginning to quilt a bit on their sewing machines but I was a hand quilter.
Marion Morgan says
All of the above. Quilting is so much easier now and I love the precuts and all the new gadgets. Can’t imagine going back.
Deb K says
My mom introduced me to quilting in the early 70s when we lived in Kansas. I remember her taking me to a real quilting bee where the Mennonite women were meeting in an old white steepled church in Tonganoxie. They all sat around a frame with a quilt and there were kids playing underneath. I also remember taking a class with her where we used cardboard from cereal boxes and cardboard from Hanes hosiery to make our templates.
Sharon says
In the early to mid seventies, I machine pieced and machine quilted my quilts. In 1984 I took a workshop with Joen Wolfrom on Representational Strip Piecing – (landscapes), and one with Joyce Schlotzhauer on her curved two patch system. In 1989 and 1990 we had a local long arm quilter that quilted tops I had pieced for each of my husband’s eight brothers and sisters. She could only do pantographs, and several of them had pleats in the backing when she returned them.
Jenny says
I took my first class at a quilt shop in 1992, we did a Quilt in a Day log cabin. I did it totally Amish. My great grandmother used it every day until it finally just wore out. I remember watching my other great grandmother hand quilting and slept under quilts she made when I was very young. My very first quilt was made when was nine so 1976-77 ish. It was a big bag of polyester (double knit) hexagons I found in the closet at my grandmothers. It was just as hideous as you can imagine lol.
Sharon Downey says
I learned just the way you mentioned above. No strip cutting or rulers and mats and most of all we did not have the rolling cutting blades or the 1/4 foot on our sewing machine. It’s a wonder I stuck with it. If I were to make a nine patch then I started with 9 squares sewn piece by piece. Now I can make a bunch of 9 patch blocks in very quick time. I have some of my grandmothers patterns. They were cut from cereal boxes.
Sharon Downey says
By the way I learned in 1968.
Brandy M. says
It wasn’t even that long ago that I started quilting. Errrrr – “making my first quilt.” (don’t get me wrong – it was much later that the first quilts were actually “quilted,” and I didn’t do it myself!)
Anyway, “back then” I didn’t know anything about a rotary cutter & all that. I bought fabric and a 6.5″ square ruler. I set the ruler down on the fabric and probably used a ballpoint pen to trace. I cut each one out with scissors, and then made these massive 9-patches. Yep – like 18.5″ square, unfinished! LOL.
I actually wish I’d started out even earlier & sewn some by hand, but… I’m grateful that I had my super cheap Kenmore sewing machine.
18.5 inches square…. super-cheap ugly fabric…. Ugg! That’s now the “beater quilt” we take to the beach & places it needs to be able to get dirty. That quilt – I swear – it’ll never die!
🙂
Gail Sheppard says
I remember making quilts in the early 80’s. In the small northern town where i lived, Eleanor Burns, quilt in a day, log cabin was all the rage. A bunch of us met and TORE our fabric into strips … Oh what fun! Once the top was made, we’d gather to hand quilt it.
I love the difference the rotary cutter has made.
Paula L says
Cutting pattern pieces with scissors, treadle machine piecing, getting cotton from the gin in “town”, getting the cotton in a nice even layer then hand quilting on frames hanging from the ceiling. Oh my!! Progress is great.
Valerie Boudier says
In the sixties I started a hexagon (English paper pieced) duvet cover. It’s still not finished
Marly says
I learnt to quilt last year, but my patchwork history goes back much further. In about 1957 my teacher gave me a hexagon she’d cut out of an old envelope, told me to use it as a template to draw more hexagons out of old envelopes or postcards and use them as patchwork shapes. The fabric I had to find for myself. That wasn’t really difficult as my mother made our clothes herself, and I only needed to cover 1.5″ hexagons.
There was a problem though, the envelopes we received must have been the thinnest ever produced, and I wondered why my hexagons didn’t fit together properly. After a couple of weeks the summer holidays began and I never looked at patchwork again … ever!
I vowed “Never again”, and that was it until my daughter asked me, in 2006, to make a quilt for her baby, due a couple of months later. It took me five years! In 2012 I visited a quilt shop for the first time, and see here, more than 50 years after the first try, I’m addicted!
But how was patchwork when I started – an obstacle race!
Viki says
I started with Eleanor Burns’ Quilt in a Day Patterns. The first was a log cabin where one sewed on a strip and whacked it off to length. Next I made her Basket Quilt and rapidly moved on to a log cabin with a star in the corner. I did use a rotary cutter even back in the mid 80’s. It was quite awhile before I tried any patterns other than those in her books.
Laura says
When I started quilting, rotary cutters were just becoming popular, thanks to Eleanor Burns. I remember watching her show on PBS.
val says
I’m sooo spoiled as I just started quilting four years ago…but I so love everyone’s stories and admire the friendships quilting forms. (I wish I had a grandmas that quilted. My mother sewed all clothes when we were young and I loved that! I learned to sew from her and in my high school home ec class…I loved that class!!!!
Tina in NJ says
Georgia Bonesteel’s Quilt as You Go was big when I started quilting. One of the first magazines I bought was QNM’s 15th anniversary issue. Biscuit quilts were big, too. They looked like a raft of tiny pillows lashed together.
Vicky says
When I started quilting in 2001, everything was much the same as it is now. Except they keep making better mouse traps. And I seem to want them all. 🙂
Karen says
I didn’t make a lot of quilts in the 80’s but I made my quilts just like explained through the 90’s – I didn’t start machine sewing and rotary cutting the late 90’s – I like the old ways but wanted to make things faster so finally moved to a sewing machine and rotary cutter – I still mainly hand piece and hand quilt but do more machine work than I used to do. I find hand work so relaxing
Mary in VA says
My first quilt was hand-cut with scissors. It was in the early 90’s. Then I discovered rotary cutters and cutting boards. What a difference!
Cathlene says
My very first experience with quilting was a hand pieced triangle quilt. My mom decided that hand tieing it would be better than quilting. I loved that quilt to death. It finally fell apart after years of use.
My next experience was a Quilt as you Go book I used to make baby quilts for my girls. I hand quilted strips of blocks and assembled them into quilts. I learned about applique and had a great time mixing pieced blocks with appliqued blocks. I wasn’t all that aware of what was popular, I just knew that with those instructions and my hand made frame I could be very creative.
Vicki H. says
Had to hand piece and hand quilt everything because it was the “right” way but also I didn’t have a sewing machine then! Lapquilting was popular and making everything “heirloom” was stressed. Now I make what I fancy, I use a machine and have a long arm. I use all the colors I want and even, deep breath, IMPROV quilts, freehand quilting. 🙂 I am feeling a bit dated now.
Carrie says
My first lessons came from Eleanor Burns’ PBS show. Strip piecing, rotary cutting, “birthing” the quilt, and all in one day! The rotary cutting and strip piecing have certainly stayed with me, but it takes me way longer than a day to make a quilt, especially with hand sewing the binding to the back!
Pat says
In 1988, having just moved to a new city, I attended a Pioneer event where a woman was quilting. I decided I could do that and drove to Joanne’s on the way home to buy fabric. I made a king-size rail fence quilt with a yardstick, a pencil, and a scissors.
Diana Wilson says
I’m impressed!
Marsha says
Love the stories.in the late 90’s I decided to quilt when we learned my daughter in Law’s were pregnant. I thought Grandmothers made baby quilts. I learned to quilt by enrolling in a local quilt shop class. Still making quilts for the grandchildren
Joan says
I started quilting in the 70’s, long before all the tools we rely upon now were even imagined. I remember how excited I was when mary Ellen Hopkin’s book “It’s OK if You Sit on My Quilt” was published and rotary cutters first became available. Finally – an easier way to make half square triangles, except the measurements published in the book were wrong!! My first Bear’s Paw quilt (made with the then standard light value, mid value, and dark value small green calico) was a nightmare! None of the seams matched, but I loved it none-the-less. Once I figured out what the correct measurement should be, it was smooth sailing from that point forward – no more templates, sandpaper and scissors!
Diana from SC says
Yes, all of the above….cardboard, sandpaper, etc for templates. Love how much easier it is now. Love making quilt tops and whatever comes to mind.
Sandy says
I took my first quilting class in the fall of 1987 in which we learned to make our own templates, cut out our pieces with shears, and to hand piece as well as hand appliqué. We also learned to piece on the sewing machine. The new rotary cutter was demonstrated in the last class and I was scared to death of it!
Sarah in Ok says
A little behind but I wanted to contribute to this question. I learned to quilt in the 1930’s. Yes that makes me really old. At four I made my first doll quilt. Then our patterns were from friends, relatives , or ordered through the newspaper. Most patterns were hand drawn on newspapers or brown grocery sacks and were quick to loose that quarter seam allowance. So every seam line was drawn. I first learned to stitch by hand and then by 8 (when I was tall enough to reach the peddle) was using the treadle machine. All the new modern tools are wonderful to me! Thankful someone is always making things better.
Bev in Colo says
In the early 1970’s, I made a quilt for my then 4 yr old to take to daycare for her naps. It’s a heavy one, almost forgot that I made it. And it’s still as good as new. I quilted it on my sewing machine, and added her name on the border. In 2001, I joined a quilt guild in a small, country town in Kansas. As a free gift given out at a meeting, I received some old patterns that were printed on Mountain Mist packaging. There are about 6 or 8 of them, still good condition. I love them all and pull them out of my filing cabinet now and then to look at and appreciate. Piecing and applique required cardboard templates, pencils, sewing lines marked in pencil, scissor cutting, and sewn on my old machine. Seam sizes weren’t important, but most were 1/2 inch. Quilting lines given full size so you could hand or machine quilt as desired. Oh, and who ever went to store to buy new fabrics, when the rag bag was full of old shirts, skirts and blouses for piecing. If you could get some nice feedsacks, then you really had something special! I remember Mary Ellen Hopkins books, and got to see her at a meeting there in Kansas, in 2000 or ’01; she was demonstrating her personal, private measurements. There were a lot of embroidered quilts then, the presidents of the U.S., and state and flower blocks very popular. Lots of patterns given in newspapers, and the old Workbasket magazines.
Bev in Colo says
Oh, those old Mountain Mist patterns are from the 1930’s. I’m so lucky to have these treasures.
Cari J says
My Senior year of High School 74/75 was my first quilting adventure. Using a cereal box squared to 9″. My dad made sure it was perfectly square. I made a quilt of all my left over clothing projects through HS. My parents still have it. Standard size, not tied, heavy and all the memories still. Some day I will have to get it back and dismantle it and quilt it properly on my midarm. I got married while in College and went on to making quilts and quilted diaper bags as gifts to my girlfriends and wives of my husbands buddies. 1984 I went to work for a leather clothing manufacture “Lotus Leathers”. Think Bo Derek leather swim suit, we made that suit. They used Olfa rotary cutters on Olfa healing mats to cut the skins. My first cutter from Lotus cost me ten bucks & mat was five dollars. We could make jackets and duvets out of any scrap leather left over. I still have the mat. Sewing in general changed for me from then on. Industrial sewing machines were awesome. It wasn’t until 1997 I found Alex Anderson on Cable TV. The door has been wide open since then……
Cari J says
My Senior year of High School 74/75 was my first quilting adventure. Using a cereal box squared to 9″. My dad made sure it was perfectly square. I made a quilt of all my left over clothing projects through HS. My parents still have it. Standard size, not tied, heavy and all the memories still. Some day I will have to get it back and dismantle it and quilt it properly on my midarm. I got married while in College and went on to making quilts and quilted diaper bags as gifts to my girlfriends and wives of my husbands buddies. 1984 I went to work for a leather clothing manufacture “Lotus Leathers”. Think Bo Derek leather swim suit, we made that suit. They used Olfa rotary cutters on Olfa healing mats to cut the skins. My first cutter from Lotus cost me ten bucks & mat was five dollars. We could make jackets and duvets out of any scrap leather left over. I still have the mat. Sewing in general changed for me from then on. Industrial sewing machines were awesome. It wasn’t until 1997 I found Alex Anderson on Cable TV. The door has been wide open since then……
Cari J says
delete one of mine above……
Linda says
LOL – oh my. Yes, Judy, I’m from the same era as you. I remember one day when my supervisor at work came in and told me her husband had bought her a thing called a rotary cutter so that she could have an easier time at coupon cutting! I did some asking around and found out about cutting mats and rulers. Wow, did that blow my mind. It’s been a fun ride.
Lea says
I started my first quilt in 1977 and finished hand piecing the top in 1979. I traced the squares (9 patch) from cereal boxes and probably used a pen to trace around. I didn’t even know how to quilt that first quilt (or many after it), so it sat for a long time until I gave it away as it was. Back then my quilts were hand sewn and tied or hand quilted, and I use the term hand quilted very loosely here. Sad little quilts (and 1 bed size) they were. I didn’t know any quilters and there were not quilt shops around so I plugged along. And I loved every minute of it.