Want to make your quilting easier to carry with you? Try the quilt-as-you-go methods that women of the 1800s invented so they could work on small blocks in stolen snatches of time. This quilting approach has many other benefits:
- It allows shorter sessions for tasks that some find tedious--no more weeklong cutting or piecing marathons.
- It makes sewing-machine work less cumbersome.
- It makes use of small batting scraps.
- It doesn't require a frame.
Based on research ranging from the women's diaries, to finds at quilt auctions, to clues shared by worldwide quilter chat groups, Portable Patchwork tells stories about the origins of this technique and the creative women who made or owned the quilts. Included are four projects demonstrating different quilt-as-you-go methods, allowing you to master this technique and add your own unlimited variations--just as your foremothers did.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Chapter 1. A Field Guide to Quilt as You Go
Chapter 2 The Search for the Origin of Potholder Quilts
Chapter 3. The Earliest Potholder Quilts: 1837-1850
Chapter 4. Friendship and Presentation Quilts: 1851-1860
Chapter 5. The American Civil War: 1861-1864
Chapter 6. A Multitude of Fabrics: 1865-1900
Chapter 7. Fundraising and Folded Quilts: 1901-1969
Chapter 8. Quick and Easy Quilting: 1970- Twenty-first Century
Chapter 9. Projects
Pamela Weeks is the Binney Family Curator of the New England Quilt Museum. She is a quilt historian and quilter, and coauthor of Civil War Quilts with Don Beld.