When looking at antique quilts, you will sometimes find a part of the design that catches your eye because something is different from the rest of the quilt. Maybe it is a block placed “wrong” or a color that jolts because it doesn’t fit in to a grand color scheme. Or perhaps it is a row of blocks that are pointing in a different direction from the rest. I can stare at a quilt with a glaring “mistake” and wonder if it was done deliberately, accidentally, or out of necessity. I have a suspicion that the designer of the quilt is looking down and with a snicker saying, “Made you look!” I have possession of a quilt made by my great grandmother that has a row in it that I have been wondering about for years. Can you spot it in the picture?

In yesteryear, quilts were made mostly out of necessity, not to say there aren’t stunning quilts of old. Every available scrap from old clothes, flour sacks, and any and all fabrics that had run out of their intended usefulness were revived and sewn into a quilt. I would venture to say they could probably have made an entire quilt top with the fabric we nonchalantly throw away today for being too small. These quilts were made to be used.

This is a stark difference from today’s quilting world. We are equipped with tools, books, and yards upon yards of fabric our quilting ancestors would never have dreamed of. If they knew we buy fabric just to be used in a quilt, what wouldn’t they say! Quilting is now thought of as an art where perfection is the intended goal and usefullness is not often the motivation. We make them to have a creative outlet, to express emotion, or to elicit a desired response from others. My own quilting journey has become more of the latter as I have gone along. I used to tell people that I made quilts to be used. Not so much anymore.

I had intended to write about Color Tangles today as I have reached the milestone of finishing the center of the quilt top. Somehow what I wrote needed to be said instead.