Quilts and their history ~ An ongoing series.

At the time I made this High School graduation quilt for my oldest niece, Heather, I was still pretty new to this whole quilting thing.  It was 1994.

I *thought* I created this pattern and maybe I did.  But there are an awful many similar ones out there.  It appears to often be called Ocean Waves, but most are a bit different. They usually have four rows of half square triangles, around the center blocks, where this one has only two.  Often the center block is done in one block, as opposed to the two colors and four triangles.

After doing a lot of searching, on the web, I did come up with this blogger who has a rather large collection of Ocean Waves quilts and there is one, the blue and white one at the top, that is very similar, so who knows.  If there is another name for this particular version, I’d love to know what it is.

Heather was really in to yellow when she was heading off to college and her mother requested that if we wanted to get her things to help decorate her first dorm room that to get it in sunflowers.  You remember the 90’s, right?  Sunflowers were everywhere. Heather soon possessed the largest collection of sunflower decor I have ever seen.  I am just glad I didn’t fall for *that* trend, LOL!  Yellow and white is a classic and totally unrelated to the 90’s fad decor….

This was an early quilt done with white as opposed to my usual natural/unbleached muslin.  All these years later, it’s still a toss-up over which I prefer….

I believe this is a twin size and it is definitely hand quilted.  It has its corners cut off to follow the angles of the on point blocks. It’s quilted with straight lines through the centers of the blocks and around the borders, about 1″ apart, if I recall correctly, and I believe outlining of the smaller triangles, 1/4″ in.  I haven’t seen this quilt in forever.  I suspect it may be up there at the top of the *loved to death* quilts list.

It looks as if Grandma Sue was possibly still doing my embroidery.  And it looks like I wasn’t really into photography.  Pretty sure if I had had a digital camera, then, that bottom corner of the bed would have been remade.  And that’s definitely not my wallpaper.

Revisiting this quilt and the web, looking at other variations, of similar quilts, makes me consider doing another one of these.  It’s so traditional but with a fresh cheerfulness about it.

I do know that stash-busting, scrappy quilts will always be one of my favorites.   Making quilts for those who love, use and appreciate them, makes it all the better.