Many years ago, my daughter was taking weaving lessons with a professional weaver and teacher, Charlotte Allison, in Fredericksburg, Texas. I was on taxi duty and spent a considerable amount of time waiting in Charlotte’s lovely home. One item captured my attention every time we visited: It was a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt, decoratively hanging over a quilt rod at the wall in Charlotte’s living room. “I wish I could weave something like that” kept going through my mind.
Charlotte’s quilt is a classic heirloom. She recalls the maker, her Great-grandmother Mary Mollie Lima St. Peter (1875-1946) from Arkansas. Charlotte remembers “Though I was very young (perhaps 4 or 5), I remember being at her farm one time and playing with old dolls under a tree. She hand-quilted out of scraps.”
The original quilt is made of printed flour sacks as was common during the time of the Great Depression.
It was this quilt that inspired me to develop my hexagon pin looms and the continuous-strand weaving method for hexagons.
Busy years went by and the thought of one day weaving Charlotte’s quilt never left me.
It took several attemps to find the “right” yarn for such a project. Last year, while preparing for Handwoven’s first Weave Together retreat, I met Susan Bateman from Yarn Barn of Kansas. In preparation for the retreat I sampled some of her yarns on my pin looms. Susan had just launched her own 4/2 cotton yarn line, Ad Astra, and long story short, I decided that this cotton would be the perfect match for my Grandmother’s Flower Garden blanket.
One design challenge was to simulate the many colors of the original print fabric, and Susan’s new cotton line was not only available in a vast array of colors, but the weight would also allow me to blend colors and get close to each original flower’s appeal.
Single-stranded, Ad Astra weaves up beautifully on the XF-extra fine sett looms. Holding two strands together and woven on the R-regular sett looms allows for color-blending and matching colors closely to the original quilt.
For my blanket, I used the TinyTURTLE™ looms in XF-extra fine sett (single-stranded Ad Astra) and TinyTURTLE in R-regular (double-stranded Ad Astra). However, you may choose your own yarns and use any sett that is suitable for your yarns to tell your family story in a Flower Garden blanket.
I had started weaving my flower garden quilt when Little Looms’ call for submissions with the theme “family ties” posted. Charlotte’s family quilt was the inspiration for my submission, but the relationship between our families had grown over the years from a teacher/student relationship between Charlotte and my daughter to precious “chosen family” ties with deep cares for each other.
The Flower Garden blanket will always have a special place in my heart. I feel humble and grateful to see it featured in Little Looms Winter 2025. We carry the print copy in our Etsy store.
I hope that the tale of two blankets may inspire you to craft your own!
