OCTOBER 1, 2020
I returned to Key West for the warm winter weather seven years ago. Jim wanted a project and warm weather. He had a retirement dream to buy an old house in France and rebuild it. It wasn’t as easy for us to travel so far away from Canada with a little dog and live in France for the winter months, January through April. It also wasn’t practical to be so far away from family or if we needed to get back home quickly as we recently experienced when Canadians abroad received a travel advisory to return home immediately.
Over the years that we were in Key West I was collecting vintage post cards. This fabric collage is after a postcard with the title, Old Town Trolley and Station—a beloved tourist attraction—that is now known as the Conch Train. Just writing this brings to mind the whistle and clash-clang of the bell when the train departs. I have vivid memories of the Conch Train from when I lived in Key West as a small child.
This piece could be called a quilt because it does have horizontal machine quilting across the surface. There is a layer of batting between the front and back of this piece. But the fabric has not been pieced—which means sewing all the small pieces to each other with a ¼ inch seam allowance—the edges of the fabric pieces butt up against each other.
The design has been arranged on top of a vintage tea towel. I have a collection of them from my years of travel.
There is that hexagon again! Chickens are free range in Key West. Here they are wandering around the tea towel just the way they appear on the streets. I cut the hexagons from a French inspired fabric that I had in my collection.
The perimeter of this work is finished in one of several ways a quilt would be completed. Binding the edge with a narrow strip of fabric is probably the most common one. I chose to finish the edge with Prairie Points, where squares of fabric are folded in four to create a triangle, and then the corner of one triangle is slightly tucked into the adjacent one. It takes a lot of measuring to get it right!
Old Town Trolley and Station, 2020, fabric collage, vintage tea towel, prairie points, 20 x 28 inches
The back of the collage has hanging sleeves at the bottom and top edge, a length of matt board has been slipped through, with holes at each end to attach to hardware on the wall.
I recreated the address side of the post card by printing it on fabric. It is a good idea to include information about the quilt for historical purposes. As a minimum the maker’s name and the date should be there. I machined embroidered the title, fabric content and size. On the address side, I have the address. But Key West is so small that the zip code, 33040 would be enough!
The postage stamp is a black bird-print fabric in the top right corner. 2020 is repeated many times to replicate the look of a cancellation mark. And just for fun, AIR MAIL has been added too. Once the creative juices get flowing it’s hard to stop!
The machine quilting is more prominent on the back.
Old Town Trolley and Station, 2020, fabric collage, reverse side, fabric post card, machine embroidery, 20 x 28 inches