August 06, 1933

Detroit News Quilt History Project; Michigan State University Museum; Susan Salser

Detroit, Michigan, United States

A Beauty in the Home column including letters from Quilt Club Corner members.

Beauty In Home Quilt Club Members Making Friendship Quilts
Many Exchange Pieces and Find Much Pleasure in Patterns That Represent These Thoughtful Workers.

By Edith B. Crumb.

Everybody in the Quilt Club, I feel certain, would like to see a line or two in the Corner from everybody else, so just drop your cooking, sewing, knitting, quilt-making or whatever you may be doing right now and sit down and drop a few lines to the Quilt Club Corner. Just a penny postal card will be enough. Let's see how many we receive cards from this week.

You will be interested in the letters today. Mrs. Yost has been having lots of fun receiving and sending patches. There is a letter from someone who lives in Detroit on a boat all winter and in Grand Haven in the summer and there are little bits in each letter that will be of interest to quilt-makers. There are also some questions that you will have to think up answers for so as to help these dear ladies who are trying so hard to make successful quilts and so until next week - here's waiting for heaps of letters.

My, my! What a thrill I got when I saw my letter in that certain Saturday's News. The second thrill (or, really a whole long series of them) was when the mailman stopped daily (twice, if you please) with such nice fat, bulging letters filled with such beautiful prints. On! the fun of going to the box for them and what greater fun to open them and see what they held.

I thought that the prints I had were pretty, but those I received were, by far, prettier and no two alike. Well, that was once when it rained, but such a delightful rain of letters and pieces. Thanks to you Miss Crumb, this surprise came to me. I had loads of big patches and you should have seen them go to all parts of Michigan.

Now, I am going to begin cutting and sewing the Double Wedding Ring for I do not find anything that one can use up the scraps in as well and as i have seen several made up. I changed my mind. I really didn't think I would ever make one; but now I want one, too; so having still a bag of my small pieces I have saved I would like to make my Double Wedding Ring, a Double Friendship circle of pieces that were traded and with each a different piece. So, Column quilters, would you care to exchange pieces with me - not more than five small pieces each, either cut or uncut? What do you say? Let it pour - the more the merrier, all kinds, all colors!

The Corner grows more interesting daily and I have never missed a letter yet. This is my small contribution to keeping it going. And, as for the radio, I wish you had a full hour. No sooner do I get interested than it is over with. I enjoyed Mr. Priestly so much. I felt so sorry for him. He surely "put his foot in it," didn't he? But by now he could probably taqlk about quilts like an old-timer.

Miss Crumb, would it be possible to receive some of the older patterns first printed by The News for some of us newer and younger quilt-makers after the contest is over? Also, I have been reading your antique column on Sundays to see how many times you cannot help but mention quilts. I wish you had described them more fully. Couldn't you, some Sunday soon, just make up your Antique column with just descriptions, ages and names of patterns of quilts and kinds of materials of which they were made?

Would the binding on the edge of the quilt have to be finished by hand or could it be done on the sewing machine? I wondered about that as I did not see it answered anywhere before.

I have almost enough pieced patches of a pattern that I first started, having two more which I simply have not had time to finish for a whole quilt ready to go into the squares? Isnt' that nice? The first one is almost finished.

Good wishes, and I can hardly wait to see all of those lovely quilts in the contest.
(Mrs.) Judith Yost.

Well, you are certainly doing your part, Mrs. Yost, to keep the Corner alive and I am so happy to know that you received so many letters and patches. I know that you enjoyed all those thrills and this exchange of patterns will no doubt keep up for some time especially when you have asked for bits for a friendship quilt.

Yes, you new quilt-makers may have some of the old patterns after the Contest. I think you will like these old ones too for they are revivals of the antique patterns.

As for the Antique column there has already been a column devoted to quilts alone but that was during the winter and perhaps you were not reading about antiques then.

I think your quilt is more attractive if finished by hand, although I do not see why it would not be all right to sew the first side of the binding on by machine for when it is turned over it does not show the stitching and it will make a much firmer edge. However, the finishing of the second side should really be by hand.

Be sure to write to the Corner and report on how many letters you get for your friendship ring.

And, Mrs. Yost, will you please just drop your name and address on a card and send it in. You have included 2c in your letter for the Double Wedding Ring pattern, but you have only signed your name and upon looking your card up in the membership file, I find that you have not been entered. Is this your error or ours? I do hope that you will send in your membership blank right away if you have not already done so.

I am a reader of the Quilt Club Corner and look for the letters every night.

I have pieced one Flower Garden quilt and another is nearly finished. I also have the Trip Around the World pattern which I will start next.

There is a question I would like to ask. How do you stretch a quilt and hold it in place while quilting it without the frames? I would like to quilt one without the frame and using the hoops if I knew how to hold it together.
Mrs. G.H. Brown,
636 Lakeview, Birmingham, Mich.

First of all, Mrs. Brown, why don't you join the Beauty in the Home Quilt Club. You read the Corner and you are making quilts from News patterns, and I am sure every one will want to have you for a member?

Second, you will have to baste the front, back and filling of your quilt together firmly so that it will not slip when you quilt it on the hoops. Perhaps there will be some other suggestions for you. Just watch the Corner.

Courtesy of The Detroit News Archives.