popped into my head, there needed to be a way to exchange charms other than with local quilt friends who had the same fabrics I had. In some of the quilt mags of the day, you could find in very tiny print on some obscure page next to bad advertising, requests from ladies who wanted to exchange charms one for one with anyone answering their ad.
I happened to answer a few of these request ads and if you wanted your request to be passed around to even more traders, it was done. All thru the mail. Some wanted 5" charms, some 6", always prewashed. It was always one for one. Every now and then someone didn't play by the rules and would send nasty and not quilting cotton fabrics where I would send it back to them for not playing right. :-)
Here is my tumbler charm quilt made from those exchanges that were so fun to receive in the mail.
And a closeup of some of the 1980's calicos of the era:
My tumbler quilt has charms traded from Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Nevada, Arkasas, New York and Washington. I also received packages from Australia, too. Getting the mail was so fun that summer.
Since I have been seeing big and small tumbler quilts on blogs for months now, earlier in the year, I also made a small doll size one, called a thimble quilt.
Now I am cutting tumblers from blues and browns to make another and maybe I can show my progress on the next post. In the meantime, here are the tumbler and the thimble one together.
Who knows, maybe a blog reader was a charm trader with me back in the day and has one of her trades with me in my quilt.
