Sometimes It Takes a Lifetime (or Two)

For quilters, it's both fun and horrifying to read about quilts that took years, decades, and sometimes even centuries to finish. My worst fear is that my kids and grandkids will have to finish my UFOs.* (OK, not my WORST fear, but it does give me pause). Local newspapers, on the other hand, love these stories. For example, an Indiana paper recently announced that it took one family 138 years to finish a spectacular red-white-and-black quilt  (scroll to the middle of that page to see it, not the top photo.)

I have finished other women's quilts, but we didn't have quilters in my family, so they were almost always strangers'. For example, this blue-and-white quilt is from flea-market find: a large bag of fan-shaped pieces, with a postcard template marked 1936.

I blogged about it  here.

Below is another quilt I made from a stranger's pieces.

It started when I bought an old metal biscuit-tin full of flower petals, at a flea market. The vendor told me that he purchased them from a senior citizen named Mrs. Blackhorne, (no "t"), who lived in southwest Los Angeles - and that it was her grandmother, an African-American woman from the American South, who made them. I tried to track down a Los Angeles Blackhorne family, to no avail. (If you know them, tell me!)

Most of the petal edges were carefully turned under and basted in place with even, white stitches. You can see the stitching around the lower edges of the calico brown and green petals:

There was only one sample block in the tin  For that block, the quilter used identical colors for the inner and outer petals, and placed it on a white muslin background.

I made a few changes - I put the pieces on a red background, and mixed up the petal colors on each flower. This became my  travel handwork project. For a couple of years, I brought these blocks everywhere. There weren't enough petals or leaves for all the flowers, so I used modern fabric for some.

Once stitched to a backing, I initially began removing the basting stitches from the petals. Then I started to think about how beautiful those basting stitches were. So after that, I left them in.

I am always hypnotized by plaids, especially when they're cut off-kilter. So I made an impulse decision to use a vintage plaid for sashing. 

And then - because whenever I see red fabric, I automatically think of mother-of-pearl white buttons (channeling my inner Northwest Coast Indian) - I added buttons and hand-quilted around each pansy. 

I hope the Mrs. Blackhorne - or whoever carefully cut and based these pieces, wherever she may be now - likes what I did with her beautiful petals! 

* UFO = Unfinished Objects