Yes back in the Early 80's my husband made me a frame like that and we had the kids help us make quilts for the winter my son still had his until his wife said it was too wore out and threw it away . but that was a fun winter and the kid were 10,8,and 2 but all enjoyed the quilts they help make

Thanks for sharing. This is way cool.

My cousin's MIL recently died. They live in TN and the MIL had been a quilter. My cousin knew that I have recently taken up quilting and asked if I'd like to have the MIL's quilting frame which hung from the ceiling. I had no idea what she was talking about...until your picture. I turned it down, because I did not have the room for it, nor did I want something hanging from my ceiling. After seeing that picture I'm glad that I did...hahaha.

I have a set of these and still use them for big quilts.

Thanks so much....That is wonderful!!!

My Granny had one and used it when I was little (a few years ago) My DH bought me one at an auction a couple yeaes ago but I haven't used it yet. I do hope to try it sometime.

When I was a child our babysitter had one of those set up in her spare room it was fun,she even tried to teach me how to quilt that way. Great lady.

I am so very lucky. I have my mother-in-laws hanging quilting frame like the one in the picture. Can hardly wait to get it hung.
She hand piecd most of her quilts and of course, hand quilted them. You should see some of the tiny pieces she used. If a piece wasn't big enough, she would stitch another piece to it and the make her piece to fit. I am wanting to learn to weave and spin too. Guess I was born way to late. haha

When I was living in Lancaster, PA in the early 70's, I was given the name of an Amish woman who marked quilts for whole cloth quilting ( would you believe she only charged $5.00 for a full size top with the most beautiful feathers and crosshatching) :) :) . Anyway, when I went out to the farm to talk with her she had a frame on a pulley attached to the ceiling in her kitchen. She said she brought it down and tied it to chair backs when she wanted to quilt.

Talking about frame quilting reminds me of a funny memory. We had just moved from Lancaster, PA to Lincoln, NE in 1974. I was still fairly new to quilting and had just joined the Lincoln Guild. The members had made Christmas blocks that were sashed and then put in a large frame to be quilted at someone's home. Up to that time, all my quilting had been done in a hoop...this was my first time sitting at a frame. I was so nervous that after every 3 or 4 stitches, I would get down, crawl under the frame to make sure all my stitches were going through :lol: :lol: . No one ever laughed but I'm sure they were hiding grins.

I've heard of these...great to finally see one! Thanks!
Kind Regards,
MaryAnna

I decided to have a quilt frame hanging from the ceiling one time. That quilt was up in the ceiling for 10 years! I finally took it down and took to a quilter to finish hand quilting. I found that I did not like to hand quilt, that was why it hung up there for so long. linda

I decided to have a quilt frame hanging from the ceiling one time. That quilt was up in the ceiling for 10 years! I finally took it down and took to a quilter to finish hand quilting. I found that I did not like to hand quilt, that was why it hung up there for so long. linda

That's how my grandmother quilted... my mother HOB tells stories of how they would piece during the winter and quilt the spring and summer so there would be covers for the next winter.

Never mind the cats, I think it looks like a good hammock...

My grandma had one of these suspended over her dining room table. When the ladies of the family/neighborhood came to quilt, the table was moved against a wall & we kids played underneath while the quilting & solving the worlds problems took place above our heads.They weren't just grandma's quilts either, anyone who needed help got it.

Does that not make you wonder what these women would think if they could come into our sewing rooms now? What a treasure that photo really is

This is how I learned to hand quilt from my grandmother, she used this method!

My grandmother had hooks in the ceiling of her living room to hang the frame from. Like Rann, I used to sit under the quilt and listen to the gossip as the ladies in the community got together to quilt.

That is amazing!! I have never seen one of those.I almost wish that I was there working with those woman..That is so intelligent! Just pull it up to the ceiling and out of the way and then down again when ready to use.Thanks for sharing this.I learned something today!

What a great picture. Several people on this board have talked about their grandmothers, etc, using quilting frames hung from the ceiling. Is that American ingenuity or what?

It is so funny for me to read the comments of ladies who have never seen or heard about these frames. They make it sound like this was thousands of years ago. These are the only ones that I have ever quilted on. I just wished I had room in home now to hand these up. It is some much easier. No need for basting other than around the edges. I am hopeing to get the floor model quilt frames for christmas. I do still love the hanging ones though. The only bad thing about them is that when you roll them to the ceiling the ceiling light is usually covered. I am so glad that this pic was posted. I have tried several times to explain these frames to people and they look at me like I am crazy.

Love your photo.... Old photos can tell us so much about life back then, can't they? I must admit I like the creature comforts of today, too much.

Here's a quilting bee photo that I received from a dear friend. It is the Dorcas Society out of Hollis and Buxton Maine. The group was founded in 1897 by Kate Douglas Wiggins and they would gather in Kate's barn at Quillcote in Hollis. Kate is also the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The group is still going strong today and in 2009 they published a "tastefully revealing" calendar as a fundraiser for the cancer society in honor of the group's cancer survivors. I think these ladies would be a hoot to know, don't you?

Thats an awfully nice looking barn.

This is very interesting! Thanks for posting.

Reminds me of my Grandmother!! She would roll it up at night and then back down the next day...

None of my family that I know has ever quilted but my husbands grandmother had one like that. I don't know what ever happened to it.

The picture with the group founded by Kate Douglas Wiggins has the type of frame my mother and the ladies at church used. It is made of four boards with fabric strips nailed or stapled the length of each board. The lining on each side was basted to two fabric strips. The lining on the sided was pinned to two fabric strips. Then the boards were stretched out into a square with two sides parallel and secured with clamps. After that the batting was carefully smoothed out on top. Then the top was placed on top of both layers. I don't remember if they used pins in the middle of the quilt sandwich or not. The corners of the frame were supported on chair backs or whatever happened to be the right height. I noticed in the picture that they used a pot or something like that on each of the end chair seats. I learned to hand quilt like this when I was younger and my girls were little and they too would play with their friends underneath the quilts. When my mother and grandmother (Daddy's mother) quilted at home they did it in the living room. Mother also had a shorter set of frames for baby quilts. That made it easier to do such a smaller size. Oh, yes, the pins on the sides of the lining were removed as they quilted toward to center and they rolled the quilt to be able to reach it easier. What neat memories!

No Kidding!! When I look at all the products we have today and what they had to "deal" with ~ its absolutely mind boggling! I have a book called People and Their Quilts..it tells alot of the history and has some wonderful pictures. AND there were an awful lot more MEN quilters than you'd think way back then. =) I LOVE LOVE LOVE the books that tell stories & share history of the day and the families along with pictures and directions. Its wonderful!

Oh you KNOW they would have been! I heard the stories my gram told about the "quilting frame" although I must admit I didn't "get it" at the time.

What a fabulous picture and how neat that so many of you remember seeing these or have one!!!

[quote=
Thats an awfully nice looking barn.[/quote]

I had to go back and look! You could eat off the floor!!

This is the way my grandmother quilted her quilts.

My mother still quilts this way!

We had one of these in our basement when I was a little girl. My Great Grand and Mom would work when they had time or sometimes a group would come over and they would all sit chat and sew. (By Hand of Course)

Such a wonderful picture! I can remember my grandmother having one in her 'living room.' Of course, her living room had 2 rocking chairs and the only other furniture was a small side table with a big wooden, battery-operated radio (for listening to the war news or the 'Grand Ole Opry" on a Saturday night) and cane-bottom chairs brought in from the kitchen for people to sit on. The side of the kitchen table nearest the wall had a bench but the open side had the chairs at meal time. The only lighting in the rooms was from coal-oil lamps or light from the one window in each room. That quilt frame was pulled up when she wasn't quilting and down in the middle of the room when she could find the time to quilt. Of course, there wasn't much room around that frame either. Sometimes you were trapped until nature called and everyone had to get up to let someout visit the outhouse.

I think it's a great idea but I wouldn't be able to use the ceiling light if it was pulled up and I'm not sure my rooms are large enough to accommodate a full size quilt top with room for chairs and people to sit around it and be able to get up and move around it. If you all are like me, you have too much furniture in the room to get it all out of the way to make room for that kind of frame to be at a comfortable height.

Isn't it a mind-stretcher to see how our mothers and grandmothers were able to manage to do without so many of the conveniences we have today? Their workload was tremendous--washing in an iron pot over a fire in the back yard, hanging clothes on a line (or the fence) to dry, ironing with cast irons heated on a wood stove, gardening, canning a supply of food for the winter, milking and making butter, butchering chickens and hogs, cleaning squirrels and rabbits to cook supper, cooking everything 'from scratch'--no mixes or convenience foods, scrubbing wood floors, hauling water for drinking, cooking, and washing from a well (not always close to the house either)--and they still found the time to make all their clothes by hand and quilt the beautiful quilts that have survived to be loved so many years later.

It humbles me to know that I have life so much easier and find myself often complaining how I "don't have time" or I "don't have what I need" to do the things I want to do. I frequently have to stop and remember how it was when I was a little girl and recall how good God has been to me that I have the things I do have.

Thanks for the unexpected trip down memory lane. Now--back to quilting.

You recapped my grandmother's life (and for a while after WWII my mothers) exactly. I was born in 1944 and I remember life in rural Arkansas was very much like this until the mid 1950s. It was a perfect time to be a kid. Maybe not so perfect for adults.

My mother had this type frame the whole time I was growing up, and I had hers for a long time, finally had to replace them with new boards, I still have the hooks in my sewing room ceiling where I had the frames hanging. Had to take them down when I got the computer. Desk is quite large, so didn't have the room anymore. I love the memories of helping my mom quilt. She would quilt for people on her frames and charge $25. She would do the shell pattern, with a string and a piece of chalk tied on the end. She pieced and quilted all her life, the last couple of years she had to tie the quilts as her hands got crippled with arthritis. She lived to be 93 and I lost her in 2004; Still miss her everyday, and I have a lot of her quilts. Such sweet memories.

If you lived in a one room house this set-up would be a necessity! What an interesting picture.

My mother quilted on a fram like this and I did play underneath it. In the house I grew up in the only room big enough was the dining/living room. The frame hung over the dining room table, and had to be raised up for meals.