Yep, married to a quilter and she has a number of quilter friends, only one of which has a longarm. The last quilt my wife finished was for our youngest son's high school graduation. She finished it ten years too late, so she took it to a person she knows with a longarm to be quilted. Often she does "quilt as you go" or something. She has several quilt frames for hand quilting, and I have my mother's old quilt from from the quilting bee days when a number of women quilted at once. Nobody wants the large frame, but I can't yet bring myself to throw it away.
Up at 2:30 AM. Coffee. Checked up on the news and here. Walked Daisy the Dog. Went to the gym (leg day, I hate leg day.) Went to the store for milk. Plans for the day: Finish a quilt and cut out fabric for another. Put new exercise bike together. Such an exciting life!
During the Depression when clothes were so worn out they could no longer be used as clothes, they were cut up for quilts. Using every last scrap, postage stamp quilts became popular. These were made with squares as small as one inch. Many newspapers printed quilt patterns. One such paper was the Kansas City Star and one of the pattern designers was Ann Orr. One of her patterns was called Postage Stamp Rose. In the early 2000s, McCalls Publishing reprinted this pattern in a magazine called Vintage Quilts. This is the quilt I made from that pattern. It has 6205 one inch squares. I sewed the squares together by machine, and then hand quilted 1/4” inside each square. It took me a year to complete.
I still have a postage-stamp quilt made by my mother. I believe the tiny squares were sewn together by hand. I has become well-worn, so it is no longer displayed. I hope one of our children will someday take it as an heirloom keepsake. Sewing the tiny squares has always amazed me, even sewn by machine.
Here is a picture of our twin daughters on the quilt 44 years ago. You can't see the entire thing, but you can get a sense of it. The quilt is well over 100 years old now, and we used to have it on our bed.
That is really, really neat! I hope it is treasured in your family forever! Thanks so much for taking the time to show it to me!
Depression, or, according to doctors, severe clinical depression. People who have it, don’t need an explanation. People who don’t have it, can’t comprehend it and they tell us that we “just need to…” They don’t understand, and will never understand, that we CAN’T. We want to get up. We want to go out. We want to clean. We want to enjoy life. We just can’t. At least the medical community is working on it. They know there is a chemical imbalance and that parts of our brains are smaller. I don’t think they know which came first, the depression or the physical conditions in the brain. Hopefully they will be able to cure this someday. This is how bad it gets -- I'm now washing the same load of laundry for the third time because I can't even walk downstairs to put it in the dryer and hang a few things up.
Up since 1:30. Dog had to go out and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. My back hurts (not doing my back exercises) and my legs hurt (not stretching.) Thus, the name of my diary page!
I hope things get better for you @Jan Ahlmann . Folks here claim that getting outside for a daily walk helps to stave off the "blues". Social interaction also helps. Find a quilting club or guild if you haven't already.