Managed to finish this in time for Memorial Day so it now hangs on my wall - where it will remain until the 4th of July -- in rememberance of all the things we should be grateful that we have. I got a little carried away with the quilting ... which is why it took me almost a year to complete.
Hope everyone had a pleasant Memorial Day ....
Some of us have been talking about quilting and how different it is today. I wonder did anyone out there learn to applique the same way I did? The challenges were numerous for 10 year olds and I'm amazed anyone did applique after that!
I learned to applique in school in 1956. We had a teacher who was in her 60's and believed every child should know how to sew, applique, mend, darn, etc. She also believed it helped with eye/hand coordination (boy did it!) and patience.
We were given coloring books and told to pick out a picture of something we really liked. Because the pictures were fairly simple the teacher was able to easily show us how to identify the component pieces - usually there were only 3 or 4.
We copied the entire picture onto a piece of tracing paper and set that aside. Then we traced each individual piece using more tracing paper.
Using the old childrens scissors with rounded points - and I'm not sure how we managed this - we cut out the individual pieces from the tracing paper. The individual pieces were glued it onto heavy cardboard.
We picked out fabric we liked or thought would work from the "scrap bag" which mostly consisted of old clothes (gave some interesting features to some of the appliques) and carefully drew around each individual cardboard shape onto the fabric. There were no "marking pens" or felt tipped markers, we're talking pens and pencils here. If it was a dark fabric the teacher had small scrap pieces from bars of soap that really worked well even if it did make thick lines.
Trying to find a large enough piece of fabric for the background was a challenge and sometimes "teach" had to machine sew pieces together for us - but we needed that background.
We finally got to sew!!! Carefully (a 10 year old's definition of that word is a bit different from an adult's) we pinned the pieces onto the background fabric, basted them down and began learning that the hard part of this process was yet to come. I think a lot of those children unintentionally learned how to do 3-D applique simply by pulling too tight on the thread or not keeping the smaller piece flat enough. Many times the applique stitches were just as large as the basting stitches - but everyone of us did finish!! We had striped horses and checked pigs along with floral houses but we were all proud of our accomplishment!
And some of us actually continue to do applique today!
Happy Summer to one and all ....
Geri
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