New to the Shop: Huntington Heritage

You asked, we answered….

After seeing this picture of Georgia paging through an old issue of American Patchwork and Quilting, blog readers asked for the pattern.

Kelli, Kayla, and I figured we might as well add that pattern to the shop here on the blog so we scrambled to make that happen.

Here’s the back story on the quilt….This was one of the first truly scrappy quilts that Kelli had sewn.  We had been to Country Threads in Garner (now closed) and had bought a couple of bags of scraps that were filled with blue fabric.  There were all sorts of blues there-dark, light, medium, larger scale, Civil Wars, Thimbleberries, fabrics from the ’80s.  Truly every kind was there.

Fast forward to about six months.  I had designed this quilt and Kelli wanted to make it.  She said she had scraps at her house and wanted to get working on it.  I didn’t think anything of it.  Once the top was done she brought it home and I groaned.  UGH.  I hated it.  I couldn’t figure out why she had put such a wide variety of blues together.  I was frustrated that she mixed what I perceived to tan in with the whites.  I said-“Wow, that was fast.”  I didn’t want to hurt her feelings but I didn’t like it at all.

The top hung and hung and hung waited for me to quilt it.  I really didn’t like the color.  Finally, well over a year after she finished the top, I quilted it.  I was so frustrated, I just used a sheet for the backing.  I had two twin sheets that were the same color so I seamed them up and loaded it.

Then I couldn’t bring myself to just stipple it so the stars have custom quilting and the rest is stippled.  As each bobbin emptied I liked the quilt more and more…still I wasn’t crazy about it.  I had a red thread for the top and it really was growing on me.

As the quilt finished and I unrolled it off the machine, I knew we had a winner.  I not only liked it, I LOVED IT!

Kelli and I had dreamed about putting a quilt book together and this was one of the first quilts I designed thinking it would “go in the book”.

I wrote all the words out for the pattern jacket:
“We are a family of storytellers.  Lonne (Huntington) Johnson, my mother, and Kelli’s grandmother was an especially great storyteller.  She grew up during the Depression on a farm that jutted up to Clear Lake in Waseca, Minnesota.

She told stories about raising mink, eating radish and butter sandwiches, growing beds of moss roses, riding horseback in parades, and catching fish with her brothers.  She had a flair for slowing down or speeding up a story that would keep us on the edge of our seats wondering what adventure or turn the story would take.  As kids, my siblings and I would try to get her to tell stories especially when there were jobs to do.  Hearing the stories while we worked would always make the time speed by faster.

One of the things she was most proud of was that she had a relative that signed the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Huntington.  This patriotic quilt was named “Huntington Heritage” to commemorate Lonne Johnson and her Huntington Heritage.”

It’s both wonderful and hard for me to see Georgia there looking at the pattern in the magazine and me thinking back to my mom.  She passed away 30 years ago this past August.  Oh, she’d have loved the spitfire in Georgie.  She would have loved all that I do quilting.  My mom was a real creative soul.

I got the quilt from Kelli.  I took some updated pictures. Here they are….
I just love this quilt. 
Everything in me was doing all I could not to run to the sewing room and start making one of my own.

I adore a barn-raising lay-out.

I wrote the pattern and passed it along to Kayla so she could do her behind the scenes magic working so the pattern is in the download store.

She did that, I wrote this post and it’s officially in the pattern store now.  You can find the pattern store and the pattern HERE.  If you lose the link, you can always find our shop at the top of the page under the banner where it says SHOP.

Thanks so much for your support of our little pattern company.