Let’s Get the Quilt Frames Ready 2008

Billie Quilts on Dear Jane Quilt using hanging frames

Last week in this article we talked about piecing the quilt top, but space ran out before we got the border on and that’s important.  The border seems to hold it all together.  I heard one lady say she’d rather have a picture hanging on the wall without a frame than to have a quilt without a border.  As far as I’m concerned borders should be a solid color that picks up a color in the body of the quilt.   Quilting today is different than it used to be as, much quilting is machine done today; however, to me it should still be done by hand.  Quality, quality!!  Remember that’s my opinion – everybody has one.

Today batts come in all sizes and made of different materials, but as you know I tell about how things used to be and back then we used only cotton.  After crops were gathered ladies and children went back to the cotton patch to get the straggling boles – they called it “pulling” boles.  They then picked the cotton from the bole and had it ginned to be used for quilt batts.  This was before my day, but I’m told the seed used to be picked out by hand and each child would be given a tea cup and when they got that cup full of seed they could quit picking seed – at least for that day or night.  It took lots of cotton seed to fill a cup and it also took lots of cotton to fill the quilt.

We have to have a quilt lining ready the very first thing.  When I was growing up fertilizer and/or feed sacks were used for quilt linings and most times they were dyed.  It is believed that colored linings do not show dirt like white linings do. After enough sacks were sewed to accommodate the top the old black pot was readied and the lining dyed – many times a hank of thread was thrown in with the lining to be dyed so the quilting stitch did not show up.  Of course, back then ball thread was used to quilt with.  It was literally “ball” thread – it was coarser that today’s quilting thread and it came in a ball.

Needless to say larger needles were used to do the quilting and this made for longer quilting stitches.

My mother used to go a quilting bee when the Geraldine Baptist Church was being built (about 1940) and she didn’t want to sit by a certain lady to quilt because that lady made long stitches and Mother was afraid those stitches would be mistaken for hers. Even today quilters are critical of long stitches.  

Now about frames – quilting is done in many types of frames and a prize winner I know quilts without a frame, but she is one in a million.  There are king size frames and then there are little frames that can held in ones lap for quilting, but as you might guess mine are double bed size and hang from the ceiling in our den.  Not only are they for quilting, but many times they are used as conversation piece.  Some time neighbors and/or friends would come help quilt and that’s when they could catch up on what was going on in the community.

Of course, my space has run out and I’ve only just begun, but this how quilting was done years ago with that style of country living.