iN AWE of QuiLteRs

This first increcible picture is a photo of the original civil-war era Dear Jane quilt which I will talk about below. It's in a museum in Vermont.

I'm doing a little catch-up blogging. This was last week - or was it the week before??? Doesn't matter - I loved the day I spent at the Utah Quilt Guild Convention. The one-hour drive to Layton couldn't have been more beautiful. The sky was the bluest I've ever seen, the leaves were starting to turn, and the sun was shining. It took me extra time to make the drive because I kept pulling over to take photos and write notes about everything I was thinking about. (I don't allow myself to write while driving anymore - I used to do that sometimes, but I'm trying really hard to not be a distracted driver.


I went to the quilt show because I love quilting and quilts, but mainly because my dear next-door-neighbor Carol Armstrong was in charge of the quilt contest and exhibit and was teaching a class. Carol, impressively, puts her heart into anything she does. The quilt contest had all sorts of quilts, but it featured about 10 quilts that are called Baby Jane quilts. In honor of the featured quilt, Carol made her own version and donated it to the quilt show raffle.

This is a quilt that Carol made. Yes, she made every bit of it - from designing to cutting to piecing to appliqueing to machine quilting to sewing. And then she gave the quilt away. Can you believe it?? She is amazing and amazingly generous.

The quilt is called a Baby Jane quilt. It is a replica of the original quilt which is called the Dear Jane quilt. The original was by a woman named Jane Stickle who made this quilt during the CIVIL WAR out of the tiniest scraps of material imaginable. The finished quilt has over 5,000 pieces.

Here is Carol presenting her lecture about the ways that quilting has grown and changed in the past 25 years. It was a fascinating lecture with great pictures and definitely a walk down memory lane....gingham tied quilts, polyester quilts, the first rotary cutters and mats, the quilt as you go blocks with puffy batting, the revolution that machine quilting brought to the quilt world. Carol made it interesting with photos and little stories

This last photo is a quilting teacher named Cody Mazuran. She was in Carol's class.