QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Perfect Thirties Quilt


Denniele Bohannon sends photos of the old top being quilted by the Harrisonville (MO) United Methodist Quilters. It's a postage stamp quilt with all the squares about an inch in those sweet pastels so popular in the early 1930s. According to my Encyclopedia of Pieced Patterns, variations have been published under several names, among them Rainbow Round the World and Aunt Jen's Stamp Quilt.




I've seen kits for this quilt design with each piece pre-cut and sorted into a box like a Whitman's candy sampler box, but I imagine most of these postage stamp quilts were pieced from the neighborhood scrapbag.




Clockwise from the top: Rita Benson in the blue shirt, Lee Cunningham, Alice Law, Mildred Randall, (founding member of the quilters who is 94). Not pictured Ellen Wray and Denniele who took the photo.

Denniele writes:

We meet every Monday and quilt. Usually we break for lunch and return to quilting. The money raised is given to many causes. Most recently, we were a Silver sponsor of our local Relay for Life, donated to our two local food pantries, a backpack program for school aged children in need and the Women's Life Choice Center in Harrisonville. We make an annual donation to the Festival of Sharing as well. There is usually a waiting list and it takes about a year to reach the top!

Quilts we have quilted for others have won a blue ribbon at the Missouri State Fair and at the Osceola Quilt show.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great pictures, Barbara! What a lovely quilt. It must have been a tremendous work making such a quilt! My respect for the quilter who made her!!

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  2. I really like this pattern and I think others do to. I purchased a similar one and sold it right away to a young collector. In the one I had, the large "squares" were all white. A reverse version of the one here. Thanks for sharing with us the history behind the patterns! You are the best.

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  3. What a great quilt, thanks for sharing the quilters' story. I hope this tradition continues into the next generation of quilters.

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