Quilt Festival - Fall 2009 (part deux)

Well, I wasn't going to post a quilt for this festival because 1. most of the older quilts I have made have been gifts and I never even considered taking photos of them and 2. most of my newer quilts are either wips or ufos. But I was talking about it with Kirsten and she convinced me that I should go ahead and post this quilt.

When I was about 13, I had a Young Women's leader at church that encouraged all the girls in her class to make a quilt. This was in 1976, America's Bi-Centennial year, so I chose a very patriotic theme for my quilt. It is actually a 9 patch inside a huge 9 patch. My mom used acrylic paints and painted the pictures in each of the large white squares. I'm sure my mom also helped with most of the sewing to piece the top of this quilt. The square with the Beehive was for the Young Women's class I was in at the time, the Salt Lake LDS Temple represented my church friends, the tree represented my family, the schoolhouse represented my school friends and the star in the center was the Bi-Centennial Star that was everywhere in the U.S. that year. I took the squares to church, school, and to my family members and had friends and family sign their names in sharpie marker. As a class, we gathered to help each other tie our quilts. My leader worked at a place in Arizona that was called Pioneer Arizona or Pioneer City. It was a model of an old pioneer town, sort of a museum, and people could go there to see how things "used to be", so some of us got to take our quilts out there and we dressed in period clothing and set up the quilts on frames inside one of the houses and tied the quilts while people came around and talked to us.

Spread out on my king size bed

Yes, that's my shadow in the picture. Don't you love the big red fluffy yarn ties?

Closer view of the center blocks.
It really is square, but standing on my bed to take the picture sort of distorted it.

Close up of the Family Tree block.

33 years later, you can still make out some of the names.

I guess these are called prairie points, but we just called them points.

The "pockets" on the dark blue fabric say "I like you, America". I still love that sentiment! I used this quilt on my bed as a teenager and it is faded and worn, and loved. It's not a fancy quilt, but the memories around making this quilt makes it one of my treasured possessions.

Tracy