My Favourite Quilt

I decided I would tell the story of my favourite quilt...actually, I have a lot of favourites, but this is definitely one of them!


This is my Bow Tie quilt, I made it in July 2008. I treated the blocks as if they were log cabin blocks, and arranged them in a "Barn-Raising" set.

Like many of my quilts, this one has a specific story behind it. The material was given to me by my inspiration, Carole Gould. Her mother had started the quilt, using scraps of material from old dresses or other projects. The pieces that she had already cut out were left in an old Eaton's Cottage Sweets chocolate box, of which Carole was going to throw out. As the saying goes, one quilter's trash is another quilter's stash! I was so intrigued by the idea and decided I was going to finish what her mother started. The background fabric was originally cut from sugar sacks. Since the background pieces were quite worn, I changed them for a plain beige cotton that was of a similar colour. Then I trimmed up the pieces that were already cut, and selected only the fabrics that seemed to be in the best condition to use in my quilt. Although I had lots of fabric to make a larger quilt, I decided to make it lap-sized so that it could be used as a wall hanging. I made the border in a checkerboard style, using leftover bits of both the solid and coloured fabrics.

Although the one block her mother had completed was pieced by hand, I pieced all of mine by machine and machine quilted it myself as well and hand bound the edges. The backing was a large piece of 1930's fabric that Carole had in her stash that went well with the top and was large enough to be the backing and binding of the quilt.

This quilt makes my list of favourites because the story is quite personal and means alot to me. This quilt displays the whole reason why people began quilting in the first place. To take things that were no longer useful, like worn clothing and sugar sacks, and to create something with a new use, something beautiful, something to keep your hands and mind occupied when troubles have you down, something that will get passed down in family generations, something that can become a conversation piece in years to come, something that creates a history all on it's own.