Time for another quilt project - this time it's documentation Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on May 10, 2014 at 11:00pm View Blog Any of you who check into my site will notice that I am posting quite a few new quilt pictures and creating new albums. Some of them are from the very early days of my quilting life, such as this one from 1975, a quilt I made for my mom and is in fact, the very first quilt I ever quilted. I must not have thought much of the quilting process however, because I went back to tying for several years! And the quilting on this is pretty atrocious!

When my parents moved into a senior living community a few years back, Mom gave me back this quilt so it has come home so to speak. She must not have used it much because it is in very good shape. Ironically, my signature on the back is only half sewn, I will have to finish that!

This was long before I had a fabric stash and I was making quilts from scraps of fabric I had left over from making clothes. I distinctly remember some of the items I made with fabric in this quilt! So, I have been gathering information on all the quilts I have made. I have at least one picture of all of them except #20, which I recorded a long time ago as a baby quilt for a Jennifer Nightingale (Jennifer, if you are out there, send me a photo!) and I know it has three baby ducks on it. That's all I know though. I sincerely cannot remember it at all. My old photo books of my quilts were up to date until #86 or so from my pre-Pennsylvania days or 1997 or so. I had pictures of all the others, just not very well organized. Some were traditional paper photos, some were digital and I got it into my head that I would try to get digital photos of all 141 (yes, 141!) quilts that I had made. A big goal but I was charged up for it. So, I gathered all the digital photos and compiled my list. I identified which ones I did not have digital photos on and if I knew who had them and where they currently were. Then I turned to my facebook friends and started calling in quilt favors. I sent messages to all the owners or their heirs and asked them to send me digital photos of the full front of the quilt, the back where any signature, date, or dedication is, and a few detail shots. And the pictures have started coming in! Prior to 2000, I was making 5 x 7 prints of all the finished quilts so I started printing the digital photos I had as 5 x 7's (a small fortune was spent) and my book is almost complete. I purchased two new photo albums with archival paper and created an blank information card to be filled out on each quilt. So far I have two done. In the process of getting all the quilt records together, I discovered I had mis-numbered the quilts. So there are several places in the list where a number will be repeated with a letter B and sometimes C. I tried to make this work where it made sense, like quilts that went to brothers and sisters. Even though the current quilt I am working on is #133, there are 8 more after it if everyone is to have a unique number, but they were actually made prior to #133. Very confusing. I am not a patient woman but I am willing to wait a few more weeks before sending out 2nd reminders on some of the folks who owe me pictures. One of the most interesting requests for photos went to my prior fiancee who got a gorgeous Norman Rockwell Santa quilt. My daughters are still friendly with him and in fact friends with him on facebook so Becky agreed to ask him for the pictures. We will see if he complies. We did not split amicably. Deep sigh. Oh well. And the funny thing is, he gave me the quilt back. I should have kept it but it found its way to him again. Hope he didn't torch it... I will end with a series of baby quilts I made for brothers and sisters, the digital pictures of which have found their way to me this past week. Thanks to all the folks who so willingly (and happily) supplied the photos, especially to Chuck Luebke and Sandy Taghon. You guys are the best! The Luebke kids' (Beth, Kevin, and Caitlyn) quilts:

The Taghon kids (Katie and Brian)'s quilts:

and finally, the Masengarb kids (Jana and Karin)'s quilts:

All these baby quilts have gotten me into the mood to make a few more small quilts. Good thing too as I will be gramma again in September, this time to a little girl. Happy quilting! Ginnie