Surprising Vintage Quilt Blocks...

These wild quilt blocks were among those found in the old cardboard box given to quilting friend Claudia. The block name is Hens & Chickens, also known as Ducks & Duckling or Corn & Beans. Some of the other pieces were shown in previous posts, here and here. I'm always surprised to see fabrics like these in vintage blocks. The colors are so vivid, and the pattern is so bold and electric. It makes me wonder what kind of response viewers had to the use of this fabric. I'll venture to say it was an attention-getter. Even though I have a fabric dating book to help, I'm stumped by what era the lime-green and black print might have been from. Any ideas?To me, the blocks are both puzzling and compelling. And even a little bit hard to look at. Like an old tv test pattern of yesteryear!

But the surprise of this unusual print was compounded when I saw these lively fabrics offered in a recent Connecting Threads catalog. The swatches at left are from Jenni Calo's "Mastermind" collection. The catalog text indicates that they are robot-inspired... buzzing circuit boards and radio waves whizzing through the air. The two colorways of the second print in the third vertical row (and seen again at the bottom of the middle row) really remind me of the vintage print in the above blocks. Radio waves... that clicks, and I could see that being the concept behind the inspiration for the vintage print, too. That print seems to support the adage "everything old is new again"! I just love those old fabrics and quilts. 

Treasure Trove in a Cardboard Box...

This vibrant Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top was among the pieces packed into a box and overlooked by family members when settling an estate. When it was eventually discovered, one of the family gave the box to her cousin, my quilting friend, Claudia. And Claudia brought the box to our quilting group for us to see and enjoy! To have the opportunity to pore over old quilts and blocks like these is such a treat. Nearly everything in the box (all uncompleted projects) was hand-pieced, which is a study in itself. But examining the fabrics and wondering about the quilter's fabric choices provided endless and enjoyable discussion. We all agreed that this quiltmaker had a sylish color sense. Her quilt tops were bright and happy.

Look at this GFG unit and the use of the check and plaid with the small floral print at the center of the flower. Some of the units were consistent in the use of matching fabrics in each successive ring of hexagons. You can see several more units that "match" in the photo above.

But there are just as many units that are random and more haphazard incorporated into the quilt top. I count 14 fabrics used in the hexagons at right. And there's that same pink floral at the center. I like the quiltmaker's "no rhyme or reason" approach to combining the pieces for her quilt. It adds to the carefree, make-do feel. Plus the choice of red for the "path" between units is unique. I'm not sure I've seen it used, or at least if I have, it's been infrequent.

Also inside the box were stacks and stacks of pieced blocks, many with a complex pattern like the ones below. The little LeMoyne Star blocks at the very bottom of the photo are only 5" or 6" square.



I plan to do some research to find the names of the other blocks. Most look familiar, but I can't quite come up with the names. However, the block with the four fan units in the corners... that's a new one to me. I don't think I've seen it used in a quilt before. Very pretty, and it just shows how versatile pieced units like fans can be... they can stand alone in Fan blocks, become Wheels or Plates, or form a different block design like this one. I have a copy of Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns that I haven't cracked open in awhile. I'll let you know what I learn, and will show more of these  tops and blocks in upcoming posts. What a delightful box of treasures!

A Quilter's Two-Fer... They're Reversible!

Reversible quilts like the two shown here are really fun to make. They are fairly quick quilting projects since the blocks are machine quilted and thereby finished as they are made. Once the blocks are completed, all that remains is to trim to size and join them with narrow strips. These become part of the overall design, and are finished by sewing down the folded edges on one side, similar to binding. All that hand sewing of the joining pieces may seem daunting, but it goes along very quickly and makes good hand work for travel or tv watching.

 The Wheels blocks are made from vintage fabric pieces given to me by a friend. What is it about old bits and pieces that makes us want to preserve them? I just loved the colors and vibrancy of these pieces from the start. The green-dot background is a current fabric from JoAnn's, but it seemed to work nicely for the wheels. The lime and brown fabric on the back is also a JoAnn's sale fabric. All a bit funky, but I like the feel of this quilt!






The String-Pieced reversible quilt below was the first reversible quilt I made. It was a class project taught by Debra Johnston. The fabrics I chose for this one also turned out to be rather retro-looking once they were all combined. It definitely has a '60s flower-power vibe going on.

Because both sides of the quilts are so different from their counterparts, I wanted to use double-faced binding for them in order to keep the fabrics and colors cohesive. This is one of those tasks that makes me ask "now how does that go again?" I had to look up instructions for making the two-sided binding each time, and I couldn't describe how I did it today. But the instructions were good because I even got presentable miters at the corners. So if I make yet another reversible quilt, I'll be looking up two-sided binding methods yet again.

I'm most fond of the Wheels side of the top quilt. But I go back and forth with having a favorite side on the other one, depending on the day. Do you have a favorite?

Pieces of the Past...

Vintage quilts and blocks hold a big appeal for me. And occasionally the appeal is in the multi-generational nature of a project. Case in point: this Sunbonnet Sue quilt, brought to our recent quilt retreat by guild member Marietta. Her mother made the appliqued and embroidered blocks in the late 1930s. As a child, Marietta was allowed to embroider on some of them. However, the blocks were set aside, unassembled, for quite some time. Marietta kept them with her through a number of moves, and eventually unearthed them in the 1990s to set the blocks together in a quilt. She even found the old pattern flyer with which the blocks were made! What a treasure.

Sunbonnet Sue is engaged in different activities in the blocks... playing with her doll, tossing a ball, and carrying her school books. I love these expressive blocks, and am happy Marietta has preserved them in a piece that will now be a legacy in her family.

I like to "rescue" old quilt blocks, too. This small piece is one I made using a block that probably dates from the late 1800s or early 1900s. With the period reproduction print fabrics that became widely available in the 1990s, I was able to set the old block into a new piece. I even love old blocks that are badly made! Just look at the wavy lines in the patchwork... endearing. And I'm a bit of an expert at making my own wavy lines in patchwork, too!

Ain't she sweet....

Look what happens when the sewing room gets a clean-out. I came across the pattern for this little doll while going through my pattern file. I've kept the pattern, and kept it, and kept it some more. It's dated Mary's Patterns, 1991, so after 20 years, it seemed time to finally make one of these!

Because I collect vintage textiles, there are a few pretty hankies in the mix. They're perfect to make the pinafore the floral fairy doll wears, like the one Angelica (that's her name) is modeling above. I decided against the wings, for now at least. She needs some beading at the neckline, so that's on the to-do list. The tiny rose is pinned on for the moment. How come the things I make are so often not quite "done"?



Also, Angelica needs more blush. You can hardly see that she's wearing any, which is my style. But not hers. So I'm going to have to buy make up for her. Unless you have any thoughts on what else might pink up her cheeks a bit more. Since she has no features other than eyes, her cheeks are quite important. Maybe colored pencil?

I've got more hankies, so Angelica may get some friends. She'd like that. Then the pattern will go back in the file so I can keep it, and keep it, and keep it some more.

Preserving History... AKA Other People's Stuff...

I've been the happy recipient of bits and pieces of other people's unfinished sewing projects over the years. Often I'm able to include them in my own work, and I like keeping bits of history alive that way. For instance, my friend Norma passed along lots of small pieced fan units that her mother had made. I love looking at the old fabrics, and estimate they are from the 1950s, take or give a decade. While sorting through these pieces, I found that I could group them roughly by color, join them, and come up with Dresden Plate units. So I'm working on the blocks, and will complete a quilt top with them... some day. It's going to be a lively, happy quilt.

I also received a shoe box full of accurately cut diamonds from which to piece a Tumbling Block quilt top. I admired how the quiltmaker had been so organized in cutting and storing these. They were grouped and carefully wrapped in packages containing multiple diamonds in light-medium-dark values. Aren't they pretty?



However, I also encountered a dilemma. The quilter had pieced two of the three diamonds together already, and even completed some of the Tumbling Block units. But she did not use the sewing technique for creating Y-seams, or set-in seams, to make flat-lying units. That of stopping and starting stitches 1/4" from the fabric edges. See that little pucker? Uh oh.




It looks nice and flat from the pressed wrong side. But peek under the seam. There's that little culprit!


The question now is how will I use these? To use all of them, I'd have to get the seam ripper out and unsew all of her pieced units. I don't even like unsewing my own mistakes! So that's pretty much out of the question.

But I think there are enough cut diamonds to piece some units, and I stitched a few, like the one below, to see how it went. They lie flat. So my current plan is to piece what I can and use them in a much smaller project than what the quilter planned on. I'll re-sort and re-group the usable diamonds and go from there.

But that's not all! A man brought his wheel-chair bound mother's needlework files to our local sewing group after she passed away. This woman was meticulous and I wish I'd met her. She had cross-stitch pieces that looked as good on the back as on the front. And look at her careful notes on quilt patterns. How could we possibly throw them out after all the work she put into them? So you can see why my sewing room needs the occasional overhaul and cleaning.