This quilt was made with some hand pieced vintage bow tie blocks purchased on ebay. Although the ties themselves were very cute, the background muslin pieces were badly stained, and I couldn’t use them. I took the blocks apart — washed, pressed and re-cut them ending up with a slightly smaller block. At the time, I only had a few vintage shirting scraps for the background, so most of those pieces are reproduction fabrics. This is the 5-piece traditional pattern which is usually hand pieced because of the set-in pieces. You can machine sew this block if you use the 6-piece pattern with the 2 little triangles to form the knot, but it just doesn’t look right to me — I think the knot piece should be square. This quilt was hand quilted inside each piece.
Bow Tie
Martha Dellasega Gray, 2007
hand pieced, hand quilted
63″ x 78″
