I finally got the old DWR quilt all chopped up! I ended up with 278 usable arcs from the old quilt, and if I can come up with just 6 more from my vintage fabric stash, I should have enough to make the quilt a small throw size.
I originally thought I would make the background white, but I instead have decided to use unbleached muslin for the background for a more vintage look.
I also knew I wanted red for one of the corner post colors, and landed on this “poison green” as the other color, so I’m all ready to go!
Here’s a sneak peek at how cutting all those arcs out of the old quilt went . . . I used Victoria Findlay Wolfe’s MiniDWR template set (find it HERE) . . .
. . . and used the full arc piece to cut them.
Now to start the sewing! I think if I can find the time to actually work on it, the sewing will go pretty quickly. I just need to keep myself from shoving it aside in favor of other projects!
If you’re just now tuning in, you can find more information about this vintage re-do in the post right before this one, and I’ll keep you updated as the quilt grows!
I’m still working on Peecher’s Triangles, very slowly, but in the meantime, I also started cutting up this tattered DWR quilt, just to get it out of the box and a bit more organized.
Since I knew what I wanted to do with it, I decided to just get started. It’s going slowly, too, but I realize it’s another long-term project, and I’m OK with that.
Then I started whacking sections out of the old quilt top:
None of the white background is worth saving. Some of the red cornerpost squares will be OK, but a lot of them are not. And some of the arcs are in too bad of shape to re-use.
But of the ones that are, I’m not unpicking them — I’m just cutting the arc shape out of the arc that is already there. They don’t match up exactly, but the template fits, so I’m using the template to recut the already pieced arcs into new ones, and that is how I will use them in the new quilt. It might end up looking a bit “improv”!
Once I get the original quilt top cut up, then I’ll know how many good arcs I have, and can figure up if I have enough to re-make the quilt in a respectable size, or if I need to piece a few replacement arcs to bring it up some.
The replacement background pieces will be white, and I’ll also need to cut some replacement cornerpost pieces.
Half the cornerposts will be red, but I don’t want the other ones to be white like the original, so I’m debating on the second color. What do you think I should use?
I’m leaning toward yellow or pale blue, but pink, orange, or green are also viable choices. I’ll keep you posted as I move this project along.
I was struggling with what to call this quilt, but I needed to come up with something, so I’m calling it “Peecher’s Triangles”. I bought the top at Peecher’s Mercantile in Arrow Rock, MO, several years ago while I was at the Arrow Rock Quilt Camp. Someday, I hope to get it finished and take it back to show Cindy and her husband what I did with it!
But for now, progress is slow. Hand stitching is slow going, but I love to do it, so it doesn’t matter to me how long it takes. I do have this much of it done!
Each row gets longer, so now it’s taking longer to add each row on. I’ve been trying to do a block a day, but that doesn’t always happen.
As I cut each block out of the original quilt, I snap a photo of it, so I can put it back together exactly as it originally was, and get it turned the same direction as it was in the original quilt top. One of the rows above has some of the blocks turned wrong, but I’m not taking them back out and re-doing them. I’m considering it my contribution to the new look!
So this quilt will look almost exactly as it did before, only smaller!
Some of the patches are in pretty bad shape. Some of the fabrics are extremely weak. When I can’t salvage the original fabrics, I replace them with something similar from my stash of vintage fabrics. Some of them, I’m reusing, even if they’re faded or stained. I always think that gives it some of the original charm.
I was thinking about adding a border to bring up the size, but I can’t imagine what would look good with it, so I will probably not add a border, and it can be whatever size it turns out. Leaving the border off would also keep it more true to the original.
I’m already musing over quilting ideas. I’d love to hand quilt it, but not sure I’d ever get it done if I decide to do that, so I’m also thinking about how I would machine quilt it without doing it any damage. I’ll see when it’s all back together how sturdy I think it is, and if it would hold up to machine quilting. I think it might be OK.
And remember this one?
While I’m not starting on it just yet, I did come up with a plan, so I’m ready. I’ll keep you posted on it as I go along, too, once I get started. Meanwhile, an informal poll:
Those four-patches in between the rings are currently red and white. But the background is also white. So when I replace those, I want to keep the red, but replace the white with another solid. What color do you vote for?
As part of the Annual Final Countdown on my other blog this time, our third task was: Give yourself permission to start something new (in your nice clean sewing space).
Well, I’ve been trying really hard to not start anything new until I get my UFOs a bit more under control. OK, a LOT more under control. So I also stated that if you really didn’t want to start something new, you could dig out an older project you haven’t worked on in awhile, and it would seem like something new, and you could work on that. Which is exactly what I chose to do!
At first I dug out this vintage Double Wedding Ring quilt. It needs a lot of work to be a viable quilt top.
But then I remembered I’m already working on this one, so why not just finish it before setting in on another different one? Sometimes I can surprise myself with my own logic!
I bought this top in pretty bad shape from Peecher’s Mercantile one year during Quilt Camp, and I’ve started slowly reworking it.
I’m putting it all back together exactly how it was, imperfections and all, but replacing the disintegrated patches, and getting rid of the frayed seams.
It will end up smaller than the original, but I may add borders to bring the size up some. I’ll see when I get finished.
But it’s such a sweet quilt, and I thought it deserved a second chance to finally get finished. So that’s the vintage project I’ll be working on for awhile — I’ll keep you posted on my progress!
My book, “A Simple Life: Quilts Inspired by the ’50s”, has been out of print for quite a while, so finding copies of it became a bit difficult. However, I was recently informed that the book is now available once again, so I’ve re-listed it in my shop!
If you’ve been looking for an autographed copy, you can get it here in my Etsy shop.
To learn more about the book and see some of the projects, click HERE.
My Great-Aunt Jo was a very special lady. She was also a quilter, which was just one more thing for me to love about her!
She passed away in 2011; hard to believe it’s been so long already. But as with any true quilter, she left behind a few unfinished projects — imagine that!
Her daughter-in-law, Pam, told me that before Aunt Jo passed away, she asked her son, Roger, to “please make sure all the quilts get finished somehow.” So, little by little, Pam has been parceling them out to me to finish up, and I am so honored to have been chosen to be the one to get to finish them.
You can read about this entire stack of them HERE:
I recently finished up the two embroidered quilts that I mentioned in that post, and they came out as lovely as I had imagined they would.
Here’s the pink one:
This one is made up of embroidered blocks, with alternating print blocks set in between. Here’s the design I put in the alternate print blocks:
And here’s the design I did in the embroidered blocks. If you look closely, you can see that Aunt Jo even took the time to embroider French knots on all the little dots that are usually the quilting line indicators. What an undertaking!
So I tried to follow the marked lines when I could, but had to make some of it up as I went to accentuate the French knots.
I used solid white on the back side, and matched a pink solid as best I could for the binding.
And here is the yellow one! I think this one is my favorite of all of Aunt Jo’s quilts I finished.
While it looks like it’s done in blocks, it’s actually done in three separate panels, as embroidered bedspread kits usually came. (I have several I’m working on, and they will hopefully be as amazing as this one when they’re finished!)
Also, I generally try not to quilt over the top of embroidery whenever possible, but this quilt top had pre-marked lines, and I loved the design of them, so I decided to go with that, and I’m so glad I did. I LOVE that border!!
For the main blocks, I outlined the embroidery:
And for the alternating plainer blocks, I also followed the pre-marked designs.
This one also has a solid white backing, and I chose a blue that matches the embroidered “sashing” in the quilt top.
When I took them back to Pam, I asked her if that was all of Aunt Jo’s quilts that needed to be finished, and she said: “There are two more — I brought them but was afraid to ask!” I said I’d be glad to finish them up, so she handed me the bag.
Inside were indeed two unfinished quilts . . .
One was a RagTime quilt that Aunt Jo had started for her only grandson, Seth.
The other was a set of 21 Improved 9-Patch blocks.
Oddly enough, as I was downsizing my studio stuff for our move, I came across a bin of homespun fabric, looked through it, and said to myself: “I should give that away, since I don’t ever intend to make any more RagTime quilts.” It ended up being perfect to finish up Seth’s quilt, and there was only one little handful of scraps left to give away!
I had also bagged up an entire garbage bag of leftover tiny pieces of quilt batting to get rid of, and was able to pull all the batting I needed for Seth’s quilt from that — so I had everything needed to finish it, and it was stuff I was wanting to get rid of anyway, so I call that a definite win-win!
For the 9-Patch blocks, they were not flat, and I debated long and hard about what exactly to do with them. I finally decided that I wanted to leave them as Aunt Jo had made them. To change them would have made them not really hers, in my mind. So I simply sewed them together as neatly as I could, even tho some of the corners got chopped off. I set them 4 x 5 and had one extra block left over.
Once pieced, it was nowhere near flat, and the best way to take care of that is to just quilt it down! So that’s what I did, and it ended up being a very sweet and imperfect little baby quilt.
And I didn’t take pictures of either one of them!
And that is now the end of Aunt Jo’s UFO stash. I am completely happy and so honored that Pam chose me to finish them up for her. I think Aunt Jo would be happy to know they are all finished and that they will be dearly loved.
And if you wanna know what I did with that extra block . . . click HERE.
A few months ago, I finished my Vintage Melons quilt top. Almost three months ago, to be exact, and I’ve been meaning to post this update ever since, but could never seem to make myself sit down long enough!
I had a tough time deciding on a layout, and finally decided on a layout that looked like large flowers on big stems full of leaves. And it turned out so gigantic that I can’t even get good photos to show you what that actually looks like!
There were so many repeats of a few of the vintage melon prints that I decided to group them and turn them into large flowers. Then I appliquéd centers on them.
Then I made various groupings of leaves to look like the flowers were on stems, and added sashing in between all the groupings.
I came dangerously close to making this a very ugly quilt! It did turn out a bit better than I first thought it did.
It measures around 107 inches wide by 105 inches long. I will get it quilted up one of these days and re-measure it to make sure. Hopefully, at that time, I will also get some better photos of it to show you.
I DO love how happy and bright it is.
Meanwhile, I’m happy to have those vintage melon pieces made into a quilt top. One step closer to salvaging some unused pieces that another quilter had obviously intended to do something with.
Maybe they gave up on it because they thought it was gonna be too ugly?
I always say, “There’s no such thing as an ugly quilt.” And this will still be a snuggly item once I’m finished, even if it isn’t a show stopper! It at least deserves that.
I’m on a mission to finish more of my vintage UFO projects. I finally dug them all out last year and counted them up. As my friend, Barb, might say: “WHY would you DO that?” It’s a depressing statistic, for sure. But it spurred me to action!
I’m hoping to finish one a month (at least), so in January, I chose this Scrappy 9-Patch Baby quilt.
I bought these blocks at Peecher’s Mercantile in Arrow Rock, Missouri, in May of 2017, while I was at the Arrow Rock Quilt Camp for the week.
Since I was teaching handwork classes, I had time while my students were sitting and stitching, to do some stitching of my own, so I hand stitched them together while we all chatted.
Then I brought it home from Camp and it has languished in my to-be-quilted pile since.
In the interest of finishing older things, I got it out and paired it with a vintage fabric from my stash for the backing. At first, I wasn’t sure about it, but now that it’s done, I love this backing on it.
I quilted it very simply with an X in each square. I don’t like to ditch stitch vintage tops because it might weaken the seams further.
I put a cotton batting inside to give it an old-fashioned look and feel.
I chose a blue solid for the binding.
It’s been washed and dried and is now perfectly soft and crinkly and ready to be loved. And it warms my heart that another set of blocks has been saved from sitting around somewhere without their full potential being met!
I sure hope someone takes pity on all of my UFOs when I’m gone!
Last year, when I designed a BOM quilt for Sew Sweet Quilt Shop, I used various tree blocks, and the quilt was named Brunswick Forest. Each month, I post a bit of information about each block and show the versions that I made.
When we got to Block Seven, I had been rummaging through all my vintage bins, and had come across these blocks:
The timing was perfect, as they were nearly identical to the Brunswick Forest Block Seven: Apple Tree.
So I decided it was a good time to finish them up.
There are 16 of these partial blocks, and I’m planning to finish them and put them into a quilt together. All I have is the tree parts, and one of them is missing part of the tree, but basically all I have to do is add the background and the trunks, and they’ll be finished!
I’m using some vintage muslin from my stash for the background, and a new brown solid for the tree trunks. Isn’t it cute?
This block is just like the Apple Tree block in the Brunswick Forest quilt, only smaller, finishing at 9″; so since I had to re-draft my own pattern to make it fit these tree tops, I thought I’d also offer this optional version of the block to you. It’s a free download you can grab right here: Apple Tree.
While my vintage blocks were hand-pieced, and I’m intending to finish them all with hand piecing, the instructions are for machine piecing, which will go much faster. I’ll probably also set mine together on the machine once my blocks are all ready. And I want to do a pieced border, but I won’t be doing that by hand, either. There’s nothing at all wrong with using a combination of hand and machine piecing, just in case you were wondering!
I had to make a block to test my instructions, so look at this cutie:
I have two blocks finished, and all the background and trunk pieces cut out and ready for the other 14 blocks. Since I’m busy recovering from elbow replacement surgery right now, a handwork project might be just the ticket. Maybe I can move these along over the next month or so?
Don’t forget — if you want to make some of these, too, the free pattern is right here: Apple Tree Quilt Block.
I’ll be back later to show you my progress on these and what I’m doing for a border as I go along.
If you saw my introductory post yesterday, you saw that I confessed that I’ve been rummaging through all my vintage stuff this year. I’m trying to re-organize it all and take stock of what I have, and what I want to keep and work on. Then the ultimate goal is to actually DO the work on the ones I want to keep and finish.
One of the tidbits I unearthed in one of the bins was this pile of already-cut melon pieces:
There are 98 melons in this pile. Lots of interesting fabrics, but also lots of repeats, and I’m not sure what the original maker intended to do with them. However, this template set was in the same vicinity, so maybe they were intended for an Improved 9-Patch quilt? The pattern clearly states that only 42 melons are needed for the Improved 9-Patch, so she must have been planning to make more than one! Or more than two, even!
I contemplated piecing them into a Double Wedding Ring as a full melon version, and Victoria even offered to help me draft the concave piece I’d need, but then I decided that it would be much less stressful for me to just appliqué them down onto backgrounds. Each of these melons needs a 10″ square for the background, and I happened to have a layer cake of solids, so I grabbed it and cut the extras from my stash of solids, and started to appliqué!
I decided to use this as my next “100 Days Project”, so that I would be motivated to stay at it until they’re finished, rather than letting them languish even longer in a bin. So here are Days 1-16, up on my design wall, in no particular arrangement:
I will have some fun later arranging them to get the solids distributed evenly, and to decide on a layout for the melons themselves that seems interesting. I’m on Day 29 today.
I’m adding in two extra melons from my vintage fabric stash so there will be an even 100, and I plan to set them 10 x 10, so this will be a fairly large quilt when I’m finished (and quite possibly not a very pretty one, either)!
If you’re interested in making some blocks like this for yourself, you can download the template pattern I’m using here: VintageMelonTemplate
There’s a full template, and one that’s cut in half, so you can choose whichever one your printer likes best. There’s also a gauge for getting it the exact same size as the one I’m using, but feel free to enlarge or reduce it to fit whatever project you want to do.
I’ll keep you posted on the progress of my melon quilt, and together, we’ll see how it turns out!
The Life of Hazel Ilene 
