The American Legacy Quilt Index Series

The Special Editions Collection

Introduction:

The Special Editions Collection is a result of a long ago listing of quilt names begun in the late 1970s and continued into the mid 1980s. At the time, I felt an unrelenting desire to list the names and sources of quilt blocks albeit with the somewhat meager sources that I possessed in those years. Writing as many of those names down that I could find in a notebook, I developed categories under which many of the names seem to fit. As time passed, my lists of names grew longer, and the categories multiplied. I finally reached the number of fifty four files and I identified each file with the name of a quilt block. A long hiatus due to raising a family of four children, home and job ensued putting my project aside for many years. By 1990, with the approaching marriage of our first son, I decided to revisit my notebook of categories and names in order to create a special quilt for the newlyweds. Selecting quilt names that would have meaning to my son and my new daughter-in-law, I set to work either finding the patterns for each one and when not found, drafting my own. My search for material took me on another pathway and the subsequent years of retirement gave me the time to do what I had waited so long to accomplish. Finding the original ephemera to create the American Legacy Quilt Index Series gave me even more block designs than I could have possibly dreamed of. And the return to that simple notebook filled with so many names and those fifty four files which had laid dormant for many years laid the groundwork for another series.

With the completion of one research project, it was time to resurrect those files and put them into an order. The result is the creation of a series of booklets in which you are offered theme subjects with all of the associated quilt blocks. Each file will make, with ease, the task  of searching for a pattern in order to create that special themed quilt.