The Wayback Machine is set for 1992 here.  Every year when I hang this Columbus Quincentenniel quilt I think about how far quilting has come.  At that time, my entire connection to the larger quilting world was through Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, and that must have been where I saw this line of commemorative Columbus fabric by Jinny Beyer.  It’s a nice square little quilt, in spite of the funky way it hung on my shed today for pictures.  It’s machine pieced (possibly my first ever?), but all cut from templates, definitely pre-rotary cutter, for me, anyway.

This is all hand quilted, which shows better from the back.

The pattern is “World Without End”,  though I played with the coloring so much that it doesn’t really give the effect.  I put four winds in the corners to blow Chris on his way.  The border reads, “In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue  1492-1992”.

I could not get these motifs in the diamonds to photograph, but they are some things from the Columbian Exchange:  potatoes, sugarcane, corn, and horses.  I know, we also exchanged some much uglier things, but I was teaching fourth graders, and it was just an introductory lesson.

And, finally, this little piece of history comes complete with a dot matrix computer printed label!  Kind of an artsy use of Printshop, don’t you think?

Things were much different twenty-one years ago, weren’t they?

I’m linking up with Throwback Thursday at Quiltin’ Jenny.  Go see what we used to do.