The Original Black Quilt

 

This is the quilt that inspired the Nightingale quilts. This is actually the first time I have looked at it like this - on a wall. I made this quilt over 20 years ago. Clearly the fabric selection was very different back then.

I've talked about this quilt before, and the story is worth retelling.

My grandmother made us all quilts for our beds. I wrote a blog post about it ten years ago and you can read it here: How my Memere made quilts. Around 2000 the quilt I had for my bed that my grandmother  (Memere; pronounced "Mimm-may") had made for me in the 80's (when she was 75) was falling apart. I needed a new one. So I decided to make one for myself. 

I had been making some fabric chessboards, and doing some other sewing, and I found I liked fabrics with a black background. I wondered what a quilt made strictly from those fabrics would look like, so I began to collect them. I would buy half yard cuts of whatever struck my fancy. I found fabrics with dots, colorful beetles, chopsticks, vegetables, flowers, all kinds of stuff. I bought the fabrics over the period of about a year. I didn't have any particular theme in mind. I just bought stuff I liked. There were Oriental florals, there was travel stuff, things we now call "Novelties." I just had fun.

When I decided I had enough fabric, I got started. Like my grandmother I didn't want to cut squares, but I wanted to use the strip piecing method, so I figured out how to cut my fabric and sew it together rather efficiently (all this is in the Nightingale tutorial, so I'm not going to detail it here.) The quilt went together pretty quickly. I ordered six yards of an Oriental floral print and used it on the back. Like the quilts my grandmother made, it had no filling or batting, and was tied. I folded the back over to the front and sewed it down.

I put it on my bed, over the top sheet and under the blanket, and it has been there ever since. Really funny, I know, to have a beautiful quilt that nobody ever sees.

In 2009 I was making my quilt, Letters From Home, and I thought I perhaps ought to see if there were any quilt guilds in my area. I had gotten back into quiltmaking from the internet, so I was working alone and thought it would be nice to get to know some local quilters.

I attended a meeting, and since my Letters from Home quilt was away being quilted, I brought the only other quilt I had made - the black quilt that was on my bed, the one in the photo at the very top of this post. I waited to show my quilt at the group's "show and tell." I was the last in line. When one gal got up and said she had a quilt she said was "kinda wild" I scooched over so I could see what it was. It was a quilt of red and yellow on a beige background. That did not meet my definition of "kinda wild."

Now I have to tell you. I have always known I was different. I always knew I was what my mother lovingly called "an odd duck." I knew the quilt I held in my arms was different from anything this group had seen. I mean, it was mostly BLACK, but even I did not anticipate the reaction I got when I finally held my quilt up for the group (It is 72" x 95" so I had help.)

Dead Silence.

I talked about my quilt, told the story of why it was the way it was, but there was no reaction. Nobody said anything. Nobody asked any questions. Nobody had any comments.

The silence grew, and grew.

I sighed, and as I began to fold my quilt and walk back to my seat I heard a whisper...

"That's beautiful."

I brought it home and put it back on my bed. "Yup, Lynne, you're weird," I thought to myself.

But the reaction always bugged me. When I was cleaning and reorganizing my stash a couple of months ago, I decided I was going to make another black quilt, and started cutting strips for it. When I texted pictures to a friend in California, she called me less than five minutes later and exclaimed, "OH MY GOD LYNNE, THAT'S GORGEOUS! I WANT ONE."

That started the whole Nightingale process.

I needed better pictures for the new tutorial, so when I changed the sheets the other day, I took the quilt off the bed and put it up on the design wall, then went across the room to look at it.

And that's when I got it. I had only ever seen the quilt on the bed. I had never seen it on a design wall, or held up, like I had held it up for that quilt guild. Standing across the room, looking at the quilt on the wall I could see that those ladies saw that night - they saw nothing like any other quilt they had ever seen before. It is a quilt that is all about surface pattern - about the interplay of the colors - and not about patchwork. It really wasn't a black quilt at all. Even I am surprised by how much pattern is in it.

It is beautiful. I knew that.