What Is In A Name?

Well, I've finished three more projects from my list: two more books, and the quilt. Here are pictures of the quilt, as well as two other I have finished this year. While I was at it, I thought I'd also share a bit about how I name quilts.


So, my most recent quilt, The China Plate Quilt. It was my first try at a scalloped edge, and I'm decently pleased with how it turned out:

 The other two I finished are Way Down South:

And Maple Leaf Rag:

 Now, as for names. As Shakespeare would say:

"What is in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

As true as that may be, I still love a quilt's name which has a story behind it. And it's a very fascinating process.


Only once in almost 20 quilts have I known what the name was going to be before I had actually made the quilt. And that was with Maple Leaf Rag, because I chose that pattern specifically because of the maple leafs, and because it corresponded with the song Maple Leaf Rag. But with all the others quilts, I never know what their name is going to be until near the end.

Usually, the name comes to me during the hand-quilting part. I'll have lots of idea floating around in my head for a while, but when the right one comes, I just know. And each one has a story.

Way Down South, for example, is named such for the line in the song Dixie Land,

"And I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray, Hooray, In Dixie land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie, Away, Away, Away down south in Dixie!"

I though it fit, however, for several reasons. One, geese fly south. Two, while I was making it I was doing a lot of Civil War reenacting, and that pattern was popular during the Civil War, as was the method of using lots of little scraps. And thus, Way Down South.

The China Plate quilt was named that, well, just because it stuck. I had no ideas what to name it, but my mom started calling it the china plate quilt. And....it stuck.

One of my other quilts, In Honor Of Glory, is done in blue and reds, with stars and stripes. Rather reminiscint of the American Flag. Another name of for the flag is Old Glory, so the quilt is in honor of glory.

And thus.....naming quilts.