Beginning the Snowflake Quilt - Nancy Page Quilt Club 1932

 

A direction leaflet that will aid in making the snowflake quilt will be sent free to any reader sending a stamped, addressed envelope to Nancy Page in care of The Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho.

“I’ve tried all week long to guess what kind of quilt you have for us today.  You said it would be cool, so I decided it must be green.  But you had a green and white one in the Tuesday Club – that Road to Dublin – so I didn’t see how you could plan another green one.  Come on, Nancy, tell us what it is. Don’t keep us in suspense any longer.”

“All right, all right.  Are you ready?  Here it is.  A snowflake quilt done in white on blue as soft and cool as the sky when the snowy clouds let us catch a peep of it.  This is really Mother Huldah’s quilt.  You know the people in the old country used to think that Mother Huldah was shaking her feather bed high in heaven when the fleecy, feathery snowflakes came drifting down.  That’s the kind of quilt this is.

“Now let me tell you how it is made.  For a long time I have had people say, ‘Oh, I don’t applique and I get bored with piecing quilts.  Can’t you give me a design to outline?’ And I always have said, ‘It is difficult to make an outline quilt look dignified and weighty enough to cover a bed.  Outline for a small crib cover, yes, because the whole quilt is made on a small scale.  But for a grown-up bed – no, it isn’t satisfactory when finished.

“But still there were some of you who believed I could work out something, and here it is.

“The snowflakes – and there are 12 giant, grown-up, truly adult ones on this quilt – are worked in white embroidery cotton on soft blue backgrounds.  But more than outline stitch is used.  I know, it does not look like it as you see the picture, but when you get the real design you will see places where I use feather stitch, Cretan stitch, chain, cable, Rumanian – oh, all sorts of interesting stitches.  I believe that enough solidity and good design will be possible so that the quilt will have real beauty.  It will be an airy, fairy beauty.  But that’s what we want to work on in the summertime.

“I have planned each snowflake for a 15-inch square of soft blue fast color gingham.  I’d like to see a rather dark blue, but so many modern bedrooms are done in pastel colors that I am afraid to work it out.  But imagine this is embroidered in white on a deep blue background with lighter snowdrifts in the border and then put it in an early American bedroom.  I think it would be enchanting.

“But I’m not scorning the softer blue at all.  In fact, I think that is what most of you will use.

“Since the blocks are only 15 inches square you can tuck one in your work bag and take it with you on your motor picnics.  Each week when the paper is delivered to your summer address you will get a new flake pattern to be embroidered.

“I have planned the quilt for a twin bed size.  It will be 75 inches wide and 99 inches long.  It may be made larger by repeating some of the snowflakes.  It may be made longer by using five rows instead of four.  Or the border may be made deeper.

“That border has white snowdrifts at the edge, then a winding, snowy road and then more snowdrifts deep blue in the shadows beyond the road.  And then comes the horizon and the rift of blue sky and last the snowy flakes.  It will be such easy pick-up word for summer and so pretty when finished that I know you will want to start at once.  Next week I will give you the various stitches use in embroidering the snowflakes.”

Idaho Daily Statesman; Boise Idaho; Sunday, July 10, 1932