Ora's Quilt tops........

I've been having some trouble loading photos tonight. Thought it was my skills but have realized that it is actually blogger. Perhaps too many people are blogging and the system can't handle it!

My plan was to post the quilt tops made by my mother-in-law, Ora, and to tell you the "9 to 59 cents a yard" fabric story. I can't get the photos of those two quilts to load tonight so will try again tomorrow so, I'll tell part of the story tonight and the rest tomorrow. That's Ora in the picture on the right in 2000. She is doing some hand-quilting on the center of a twin-size Jacob's Ladder quilt. It is one of three quilt tops that she made from 1933 to 1935 just before she married her husband, Ed. Her future mother-in-law, Christine, helped her make the tops. The first one was this blue and white Jacob's Ladder. It is done in shirting fabrics and many of the blues are actual shirting scraps because you can see where the seams are. The fabrics are very thin and very soft. I used a brown and white checked print for the backing, placed a very soft white cotton batt on it and then placed and smoothed the blue and white quilt top in place. I carefully pinned the layers together and put it in the hoop. I asked Ora to make the first hand-quilting stitches on it even though I was the one who would be doing the rest of the quilting and I took her picture as she did it. This was done at her great grandson, Jacob's first birthday party. It hit me then - what a coincidence that she would make a Jacob's Ladder quilt so many years ago and then have a great-grandchild who would be named Jacob! And she must have enjoyed making that pattern because the second quilt top she made was also a Jacob's Ladder quilt pattern only it's made for a double bed. And that's where the "9 to 59 cents a yard" story begins so I will have to end my story here.

Here's a full view of the quilt top once I finished the hand-quilting. I need to crop the photo but will post it here now and crop it later.

I have my crazy quilting friends coming for a day of stitching tomorrow. We are going to give a new project a try as we have all bought some wild floral fabrics and are going to try to make "One Block Wonder" quilts. We all bought the book but we will be guided by Pandora who has already made one of the quilts. I figure if I don't like the look I come up with then I will cut the pieces into tiny squares, add some solid fabrics and make tiny nine-patch blocks. It will be interesting to see what we end up with!!

My neighbor, Kathy, has caught the "blog-reading" syndrome. She started reading my blog and now says she doesn't want to miss it, then starts clicking on blogs I list as favorites and then on my favorite's favorites and wow, pretty soon she's spent a lot of time reading blogs. I understand completely. I can't believe that only a little over a year ago, I hardly knew what a blog was and had only one friend I knew who "blogged". And then I began reading and clicking and linking and before you knew it, I was blogging, too. There are so many interesting blogs that one could spend all day and well into every night just reading them. But speaking of night reminds me that if I have company coming tomorrow, I better get to bed. Tune in tomorrow night and hopefully, I will be able to load the pics of the quilts I want to show you.

Night all!!!