Quilts: Not Just a Keepsake for Your Mother’s Generation
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
My mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother have all been quilters. Growing up I didn’t appreciate the time the women in my family spent underneath a lamp studying the fine stitches they created one painstaking thread at a time. I didn’t understand why they would spend months focusing on these intricate details only to find a safe place for it later where little hands, dust bunnies, and the sun couldn’t reach it.
Now that I am grown, I appreciate the time they spent creating those quilts. I finally understand why they put them away; the sun, dust bunnies, and my dirty hands would have ruined their beautiful handmade quilts. Now that my grandmother and great-grandmother are gone, I cherish the memories I have of them. The memory of them will live on for generations in the beautiful quilts they left behind.
With advanced technology in the world, even in the arts and crafts world, quilting has progressed to level of mass production. In a sense this is good because it increases the value of those hand-made, custom-designed quilts from the days of yore. But this raises another point. What about the quilts from days of yore?
When a quilter makes a quilt completely by hand, the pieces of fabric (usually squares) are chosen for artistic reasons or a similar purpose. Mass produced quilts are made with efficiency rather than with the long life of a quilt in mind. With handmade quilts, however, the design and fabric that hold the squares together are chosen so that the quilts will last lifetimes.
The mass produced quilts that are available from retailers or online vendors are cheap, and production is fast. It may be possible to order a custom-made quilt in which you are allowed to choose the colors of the fabric, the design, and even where the pieces of fabric will be placed on the quilt. However, these types of quilts are produced quickly, and most of the time, they end up looking like most other quilts. Custom, handmade quilts are artistic, individually created just for you, and will last lifetimes.
If you choose a custom quilter, he or she will be able to guide you on what designs and colors will complement your theme and desired outcome. Fiber artists are putting their names on such quilts and therefore have as much interest as you in making the quilt turn out fantastic, something a mass-producer of quilts will not care about.
If you intend for your quilt to be a keepsake, then a handmade quilt is by far your best option. Although they are more expensive and take longer to make than a mass-produced quilt, you will get a quilt that future generations will hide from dust bunnies, the sun, and the dirty hands of their children.
Tags: Hobbies
Popularity: 10% [?]
Sphere: Related Content