Margaret is joining our merry band of Bloggers so we asked her to tell us about herself.
I think my quilting journey really began with fashion. From a very early age, I loved new dresses and watched my mum whip up clothes for all us kids on her treadle Jones. Once I was old enough to peer into shop windows, I was hooked. Mum once left me outside Marks and Spencer in my pram- nit unusual those days apparently-, and only remembered when she got home a short while later, and my brother asked where I was. I have wondered if sheer boredom lying there looking at the same shop window – it was a bit of a walk to where we lived- might have been what started it all off.
We had a wonderful long-established market in our town and in particular, there were several that sold fabrics: material as it was called then. Mum would see the newest styles and then come home and make them for us. She could knit and sew and like any thrifty mum of the post war years, she made do and mended – apart from socks. She would not darn socks; I have no idea why. So, when new American fashions came in, I was the first to wear them. I think it helped that she had spent the War years in Russell Square in London working in a fashionable hotel, so she was used to glamorous shops and style. She pointed out to me the very smart hats of her friends in her wartime wedding photo-every single one was borrowed from her!
I can remember standing beside the machine, watching the wheel turn and eagerly awaiting my latest dress, probably in the same way that my mum would watch her own mother sew on the treadle she had brought back from Canada in the early 20 century. I was an only girl, so I never had to share my gorgeous new clothes, like my poor aunt. One of 3 sisters with mum, she once had the sad experience of having her lovely newly hand-made dress taken off her to give to a child in the tiny Irish village who had nothing to wear to her own mother’s funeral. Times were very hard in the twenties.
When she was older, she patchworked and quilted. And when she got older still, turned to me to help with layering. And so my journey started. But that story has already been told in the UK Quilter United books.
So I could use the sewing machine from early on, and learned to cut out on the dining room table and floor. I learned to gather up the scraps and keep them, so fabric hoarding ( stash) is a long standing tradition for me. I made clothes which I wore right through my teen years, and so of course my twenty first birthday present was my own machine-a neat electric model. By then I lived away from home, and so began to build my own home in a tiny flat. I had seen a patchwork quilt in a craft magazine: Family Circle in the early days. I turned to the fabric scraps I had collected and I stitched squares together. By hand. Multicoloured squares of all kinds of fabric, Crimplene, Nylon, cotton, Terylene. You name it, I sewed it. I had no idea about backing so I used an old Brentford Nylons quilted dressing gown, cut and patched, to make an all-in-one wadding and backing. I remember squares of azure blue needlecord from a trouser suit, pretty flowered navy and white cotton from a high waisted dress and blue and pink linen fabric from the Birmingham Rag Market from a Betsey Johnson skirt and top I adored and wore to death. It was a lap quilt and cosy but hand stitching has never been fast enough for me so I sewed it badly, and corners frequently needed mending. Think it ended up in the cat basket.
I went on sewing, accumulating scraps and hoarding “one day” fabrics, waiting for the opportune moment. Strictly speaking,this wasn’t my first attempt. That would have been at school where we had odd sessions in between sewing lessons involving a variety of crafts, and EPP hexagons were one of them. But that was not really my own project and it was too slow, too slow….
The second attempt was Liberty lawn. Yes, indeed, not the easiest to hand sew. And it was clamshells. Maybe the hardest to hand sew. That went in the scrap basket and eventually, being impossible to use…….the bin.
And by then there was family to sew for, so I only made clothes, and soft furnishings for years. Many were lovely, some were not. I especially remember a pair of smart trousers I made my husband which split at the seat on first trying on. I don’t know whose face was redder. Until at last I retired and tried my hand at the real patchwork and quilting my mum had discovered before me….
But that is another story.
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