Posts Written On January 2010

This is probably getting monotonous, but I still am not ready to show photos of the Album quilt top, although I am getting close. I’m also continuing to work in the evenings on the Christmas quilt and the second row is nearly complete — pictures coming soon.

This is a quilt design copied from a pattern in the April, 1984 issue of Quilter’s Newsletter. There was a whole series called “Scrap Quilts,” many of which I bookmarked for future projects. This pattern appealed to me so much that I managed to let go of my obsession to use just vintage prints. There was no way I would be able to find appropriate fabrics for the backgrounds, or enough of the same print for the corner diamonds. Consequently, the only vintage prints in these blocks are the D pieces which are from some really big vintage Double Wedding Ring arcs.

My block is reduced a bit from the original 15″ block to accommodate the size of my DWR pieces — it’s still a pretty big block. Hand piecing works best for this pattern because of all the curves and set-in pieces, and the diagramed example works very well for stitching the three units together. The sashing color in the magazine photo is so cute, but I tried a few orangey & gold colors and thought they looked terrible with my blocks — I’ll have to keep looking.

UPDATE:  Page 2 of the Friendship Knot pattern can be found on this post.

The second row is finished on the little quilt. I removed one block from the first row and added it to the second because the quilt seemed too wide to me — now it will be around 19″ x 23″ or so.

The sashing fabric for the Album quilt arrived a few days ago and I’m very happy with it. I couldn’t find anything that looked like the original fabric, but I think this floral stripe is going to look nice.   The tentative plan is to make the sashing two stripes wide.   I’ve made quite a few more blocks for the Album quilt — some with my own fabrics.  I probably won’t post any more photos until I start sewing them together.

This morning I finished the first row of the doll quilt. It would have been nice to have a little stripe for the sashing (I like the print in the original quilt), but I didn’t have a piece large enough. I also wish I had enough fabric to make the sashing 1/4″ wider, but I don’t. Even at it’s current width, I may run out of the sashing fabric, but If I do, I’ll make the outside border from a different print. You may notice I made the outer border of my block pattern a little smaller than the pictured quilt — that’s because my scraps are so tiny I wouldn’t have been able to cut the four matching rectangle pieces.

This pattern is a lot of fun because the blocks look very different depending upon the color and contrast of the fabrics in each piece. I try not to spend too much time obsessing over the fabric selections for each block — I even decided to start sewing them together now instead of waiting to arrange them when all of the blocks are done. You can drive yourself crazy over-thinking this kind of thing on a scrap quilt (or at least I can), so for me it just works best to relax and keep going (even if you think you’ve made a pretty weird-looking block, and I’m not saying which one that might be).

The quilt that I am copying is from the book, Classic Crib Quilts. Because my scraps from the Album quilt are so small with just a few of each print, I knew I would need a scrappy quilt pattern with fairly small pieces. When I saw this little quilt, I knew right away that it was the one.

At first I thought I would hand piece the blocks, but there were so many seams to sew through that I quickly gave that up and stitched the next two on the machine — it was much easier. The fabrics are a mix of scraps from the Album quilt and another group of antique blocks I’ve had for a long time. Selecting the prints and then scrounging around trying to find enough of the required sized pieces is a lot of fun — another puzzle-type project.

The blocks will finish just slightly over 3″ and the vintage fabric in the background is going to be the sashing. I haven’t decided yet how many blocks to make.  My favorite is the pink block — I love that XoXo print.

Today was my day off and I was able to make several more of these blocks. My routine is to take several blocks apart in the evening while I’m watching television, then let the pieces soak overnight in a mild soapy solution. The next morning I rinse several times and roll them in a towel. When I have some sewing time I starch, press, patch the little pieces, draw and cut my templates, and finally sew the block together.

This original block was pieced incorrectly with the center 9-patch colors reversed. I thought about keeping it that way, but I just knew it would bother me, so I changed it. The colors in this photo are just not quite right — it’s actually much prettier than this.

The best part about working on these revised blocks is figuring out which little scraps to use for each piece. This is a photo of the 3 striped blocks disassembled (2 whole and 1 half) and I just realized that I missed unpicking a couple of seams).

The half block had to be sacrificed to piece the other two — this stripe was tricky because of the large repeat. One of the original blocks in this print was probably the worst job of piecing on the top — you can see it in the the photo of the whole top in the first post.

There is only one block each of these three prints, which is sad because they are such nice patterns. These blocks were easy to stitch, having only a couple of pieced pieces.

Because several of the fabrics in the top were rotten, I need to make some additional blocks using my own stash of antique scraps. This print has a little yellow in it and, although there was no yellow in the original top, there were some prints with black. I think it looks all right with the rest of the blocks.

There was just a little odd-shaped scrap of this print, so I didn’t have space to draw the templates correctly. Channeling the original quilter — “I don’t care about no stinking grain” – I made my own wonky block.

First, I should let everyone know that I talked with Karen Alexander, the quilt historian who commented about this quilt top and suggested I should not take the top apart because it was a treasure.  Karen’s interest is researching quilts with signatures, and she mistakenly believed that my quilt had signatures on the album blocks.  She didn’t appear to have a problem with me taking the quilt apart once she realized this.

I can see how a collector of antique fabric might be interested in this top (especially the centennial print), but the construction and stitching of the top are so crude, I can’t imagine what anyone would do with it, except perhaps document the fabric.  Also, once I examined the top carefully, four of the prints were weak and tore easily (including all of the sashing).  In any event, I made the decision to take it apart and remake it and I hope I’m not offending anyone.  I’m not really a quilt collector — just a quilter who likes to work with old fabric. At least I’m not making a teddy bear 🙂

I’ve sewn 4 blocks so far (2 whole and 2 half), and was surprised at how many pieced pieces there were — lots more than I imagined.  I always think it’s interesting to see this in old quilts — I do it myself when I’m running short of a particular scrap, but some of the pieces she added are so small — just a tiny corner on some.  Her original blocks are around 10 1/2″ and mine are about 8″.  Her finished square pieces are about 2″, but the rectangles are almost 1/2″ narrower.  Honestly, I don’t know how she managed to put these blocks together and I’m not surprised that the top was so lumpy.

After I remove the stitching, I toss the discolored muslin and sort out the printed pieces to see how I might improve the piecing. Next, I make any changes in the extra seaming (making the pattern smaller provided a little more flexibility in positioning the templates and eliminated some of the extra seams). Then I soak the and rinse each piece to remove dirt, press, draw around the template and cut. I’m having a lot of fun working with these blocks and trying to figure out the best way to piece them — I love the problem solving and puzzle aspect of it. Even the tiniest leftover scraps are being saved for a doll quilt.

This block was fairly simple because it’s one of the few that didn’t have seams in the pieces.

This one was had several seams where the stripes didn’t match up, so I tried to fix those seams before cutting the pieces out.

There were two different prints in this original block, but one of them was rotten. It was tricky getting even a half block out of the remainder — lots of extra seams were required.

This last block is a bit odd because she cut all of the pieces on a slight bias. I wanted to use them anyway — I think it brings at least a bit of the original wonkiness to the revised quilt top.