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PAGE 2 THE QUILT TOP ARRIVES AT HOLLYHOCK COTTAGE Dorothy sent The Quilt top to me by Express Mail, and even though she checked carefully that it would indeed be delivered on Sunday, again it was not!!! We both emailed the USPS to complain! And were both pretty much ignored, by the way!! So, since it didn't arrive on Sunday, as we hoped, I called the local Post Office early Monday morning before I left for work to ask where the HECK it was!! They told me they had it there, and I made a detour on the way to work to pick it up!! I took my camera to work with me and opened the box there so I could take photos. Dorothy had been too rushed for time and was trying to turn her videotape of it into pictures for the internet! I took The Quilt top into the library/conference room where there is a big table and lots of wall space and finally wound up hanging it off the top row of law books so I could see it all!! It was 8-1/2 feet off the floor and still had another foot or more spread out on the floor!! And it was wide, too!! (Carla, this is probably as good a place as any to mention that we generally agree this thing is big enough to use as a bedspread, perhaps in a guest room and there certainly is enough of it to tuck under the pillows and still have it dragging on the floor!! It just happened to turn out this size, and because of the light-weight filling, it isn't terribly heavy!) So I took close up photos and far away photos, trying to fit the whole thing into the picture!! Lots of photos!! Ran out to WalMart on my lunch hour the next day and ran back to pick them up that night, then put half of them (I got double prints) into an envelope I had already addressed to Backwoods Bob and stopped by a Post Office drop box on the way home to hurry them on the way to him for scanning and posting on my website or his or Dorothy's! In the meantime, you guys has been visiting all of our websites and we were afraid to post anything anywhere you all might pop up and spoil the surprise!! We even posted on the forum to stop posting about The Quilt there, just in case you decided to check out that forum for some reason!! So most of our recent "communications" about The Quilt have been by email and instant messaging!! ENTER THE WEBSITE So, it wasn't too surprising that after Bob received the photos, the next thing we knew, The Quilt had its own website!!!!! Yup! That's right!! The Quilt is the only quilt any of us has heard of that has its very own website!! The address is: http://maxpages.com/maryquiltphoto and there may be a password on it, if there is, the password is: quilt!! Bob did a lot of work to get that website up, including scanning the photos of The Quilt and isolating each block and eventually posting the name of the maker by each block! He also got the photo of the entire quilt top on there and fixed it so that you can make the photo larger if you click on it! He calls it "lofting"!! That is when he put the password on the website, so no one could accidentally mess up the "lofting"! When you enter The Quilt website, you will find: 1. A real "backwoods" block contributed by Backwoods Bob from MA (stitched by me and signed by him and mailed off to Dorothy). 2. The signature block. 3. The Amish Basket, pieced and appliqued by an unknown Amish woman and expanded by me. 4. One of the blocks sent to Dorothy by RNMOM for ID. 5. Dorothy's "farm" block, a Dresden Plate or Grandmothers Garden-type block. I think this represents the farm that she and Spooky (and all of us) hope to have some day!! 6. One of the Quickie 9-patches I Express mailed to Dorothy! 7. Official 9-patch block signed by MaryNY. 8. Block by Dorothys Eldest - age 11. 9. Block by Dorothys Youngest - age 6. (Our youngest quilter!) 10. The Double-Wedding Rings in the center of The Quilt, pieced by an unknown Amish woman and hand appliqued by DorothyNC. 11. Ohio Star Farm block made by me. A farm in Ohio, Carla! As I recall your fathercame from a farm in Ohio, right? That's what this block was about! 12. A former potholder I expanded into a 12-1/2" by 12-1/2" quilt block. 13. Star block by Dorothy! 14. Another Quickie 9-patch I sent to Dorothy by Express mail! 15. Pinwheel variation by Dorothy! 16. Jacobs Ladder by Annette in VA, with scripture inscribed on it! 17. Nine-patch block by Sue in NY! 18. Nine-patch block by Steph in IL! 19. Ohio Star block by Carrie in WI. 20. Another expanded potholder block! 21. Basket variation by Claudia in MI. 22. Flower variation from Bonnie and Okie in OK (where else!)! 23. Nine-patch from Dorothy! 24. Expanded potholder block! 25. Quickie nine-patch sent to Dorothy via Express mail! 26. Starburst from Dorothy! 27. Another quickie nine-patch Express mailed to Dorothy! 28. Nine-patch from Sue in NY! 29. "Oriental" Ohio Star I made when I saw the fabric and remembered that Carla had spent time in China! I figured it's Carla's Quilt, so it should have Carla "things" in it!! (Guess I should have remembered to put a "baby something" in there, right Carla!!) 30. Nine-patch from Dorothy. 31. Fan variation from Alma in MD (listed in DC on the website)! Alma was 71-years-young when she stitched the block and is our eldest quilter! 32. Log Cabin pattern potholer expanded to quilt block size by me. 33. Another block from Alma, this looks like a 30-patch or perhaps some "steps" variation! 34. Evening Star block from RNMOM in ID! 35. Nine-patch quickie Express mailed to Dorothy by me! 36. Another quickie nine-patch express mailed to Dorothy! 37. Paper-pieced block from RNMOM in ID! Last - is the WHOLE quilt, which can be enlarged if you click on it! Some of the colors did not photograph and/or scan well! The real thing looks a lot more colorful!! Hopefully there will be new photos of the bound and completed quilt on the website by the time you are reading this, as well as a copy of this "story" of The Quilt!! Bob is going to be busy!! he-he THE QUILTING PROCESS I met MartiNY at the Quilting Shop as we planned and turned The Quilt top over to her for quilting! Machine quilting, incidentally, means that The Quilt should hold up well to daily use!! So we all hope you will use it and enjoy it!! Don't just save it for "special"! Then we waited!! And waited! And waited!! Marti was supposed to get the completed top back to me by Halloween!! By November 2, I couldn't stand it and called her and she said her schedule was running behind, but she would be getting to it soon! A week or so later she called to ask me some questions about it and by then we knew we weren't going to make our deadline!! DRAT!! Or, as Dorothy likes to say - BEANS!! I consoled Dorothy and Molly, telling them a wedding present is still a wedding present if delivered anytime before the first wedding anniversary, I was sure we'd make well before then!! We were all sooooooooo disappointed though!! Then Thanksgiving and the bustle of the Christmas holidays intervened!! Marti called me just before Christmas and delivered the quilted top to the Quilt Shop where I picked it up the Saturday before Christmas weekend finally!! AND it was well worth the wait!! Marti had outdone herself by quilting four hearts in the corners of the center "Double-Wedding Ring" block! Now The Quilt was actually beginning to look like a quilt!!! BUT it still had to have the binding done!! What with Christmas week and cookie baking and present wrapping and eight million other projects, I had no choice but to put The Quilt in the Quilt Room at Hollyhock Cottage and wait for the first of the year!! THE BINDING As soon as I could, I set aside a weekend for binding The Quilt! I read all the information I had, gritted my teeth, crossed my fingers (hard to use scissors that way!) and dove in at the deep end - so to speak!! I cut the fabric for the binding in strips and sewed them together until I had about 400 inches of binding that was as accurate a measurement as I could get because there was still extra backing and batting that needed to be trimmed from the edges AFTER the binding was applied! I pinned the binding on and on one corner near Dorothy's Starburst block on the top right, there was a tiny spot where the points of the starburst didn*t meet and there was no fabric! I could have trimmed The Quilt, but I would have had to cut off a whole inch all the way down one side! Hmmmmmmm, what to do?? So I decided to patch that spot!! Hey, they don't call them "patchwork quilts" for nothing!! In digging around for just the right piece of fabric to put in that spot, I came across some with little hearts on it and decided one of those hearts was just the thing for that corner!! So I cut one out and basted it on the corner and then bound it in with the binding! If you look, you will find it there!! I think it looks a bit like a "Love" postage stamp!! The binding went well until I was about halfway through sewing it to the front of The Quilt!! Then the sewing machine had a fit and the feed dogs would not feed the fabric under the sewing foot anymore!! Soooo, since I had taken a quilting class at the Quilting Shop and knew that it was possible to sew with the machine without the feed dogs, I just kept going, hand-guiding the edge of the quilt under the sewing foot! Finally, I finished that part of the process! The next part was to hand-stitch the binding to the back of The Quilt!! Actually, I just kept plugging away at it, a little at a time, and eventually, IT WAS DONE!!! So, there you have the Story of The Quilt!!! It has been almost nine months in the making (just like babies Carla!) and we all hope you like it and will enjoy it and use it for many years to come!! You should probably keep this written "story" to pass along down through the generations along with The Quilt, which will make The Quilt all that much more "interesting"!! With all our love and best wishes to both of you for many happy years together, MaryNY, for the Quilters and Members of the BHM Forum  marmacz@aol.com |
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