WW 1 Memorial Quilt – Tom

It seemed appropriate this week that I would knit a piece for my great grandfather Thomas Wade who died in 1917.  I know I have mentioned him in previous years.  He didn’t want to fight – he wanted to stay at home with his family.  In the event – he was killed and his widow had to struggle to bring up his 3 sons.

Thomas was a glass fitter.  My grandfather said he was a cabinet maker, but on the 2 occasions when he gave his occupation - in 1909 when he married and on the 1911 census – he said he was a glass fitter.  I think he fitted glass in cabinets.  I always knew I would do a glass inspired piece of knitting for Tom.

This is very similar to the design for the tea packer which means that the arched shapes will be carried across the quilt. For this piece I cast on 79sts.  I had originally intended to do 80, but the design works better with an odd number of stitches and I have just altered the surrounding pieces accordingly.  This piece is 132 rows long.

I was just going to use blue and brown yarn but I decided to add the lime green for a bit of interest. Each blue arch shape is 15sts wide and 24 rows to the shaping (29 rows in total).  There are 2 rows at the bottom and top and 4 rows between shapes.  Across the row there are 5sts between the arches with one lime stitch in the centre.  There are 2sts each side of each row.  If you want to knit one – just draw the set-up on graph paper (or the back of an envelope) – that’s what I did.

I was thinking – you might not want to knit a memorial quilt but you could knit a quilt like this for another reason – eg you could do one for your family with a different piece of knitting to represent each person – or you could do one for a special person with each piece representing an important part of their life – or you could knit a quilt  for your community with each piece representing something important in your town or village. If I had enough old photos I would combine knitting with using photo transfer paste to produce a knitted family tree.  That’s enough mad ideas for this week…