My Old Sketch Book

The old sketch book that I used for traditional style quilts has been with me for about 20 years. The book offered me an advantage when I worked with geometric designs. The sketch book has gridded paper, and the grid-line format provided the ability to graphically plot geometric shapes and designs.  Many of the designs in the sketch book are original blocks I created. Other sketch book designs are variations from traditional blocks. The sketch book also has a number of design layouts for entire quilts, including pieced borders. 

The sketch book is actually contained in a large box-file of designs. In this box-file, there is a file with clipped quilts and quilt art. Another file contains inspirational designs.  Some of those designs may be stained glass, mosaics, or pottery. Another file contains printed block designs created using quilt-related software. One file has old, inherited Laura Wheeler patchwork designs that were clipped from a newspaper in the 1930s-1940s.

When reviewing some designs in my sketch book the other day, I found the design layout for one of my large quilts, Chained Stars. That sketch is in pencil on the right of the sketch book photograph. I loved working with the original block design and layout for this quilt. The quilt was machine pieced and hand quilted. The fabrics chosen were warm, autumnal tones.

The Chained Stars quilt was made in 1990 and it was quilted while we hosted a young Japanese boy for the month of July. The boy was 13 years old and came as a LABO exchange student into our 4-H Program. Coming here was a Japanese rite of passage and he learned a great deal about living in the Virginia countryside during his stay.  He helped feed chickens and gather eggs each day he was here. He helped tend to the caged rabbits. He even helped process a truckload of our homegrown Roma tomatoes for the canner. He also learned to play chess. And he learned to quilt.

The boy, Takahiro, was very interested in my quilt. Sitting by my feet with the quilt layers draped around me, he would watch me as I stitched the quilt. The quilting stitch intrigued him, but he was puzzled by what I did. He would study my fingers as I quilted. And I had to show him rather than explain the process — his English was very limited. Every so often he would say, “Huh?” and tilt his head as if he was surprised to see what the quilting process was about.  I decided to  show him how to work the needle and make some stitches with that quilt. Takahiro left his mark on my Chain of Stars quilt, and from his smile I know he loved that……