1937 Friendship Quilt

I won an ebay auction a couple of weeks ago, for a friendship quilt dated New Year's, 1937.  The date is pretty precise, because the quilt was signed with embroidered sentiments and signatures.

I love everything about this quilt.  I love the colors, the feedsack fabrics, the simple patchwork.  But it's the variety of embroidered signatures, names and places that makes me very happy.  What a sweet memento.  I'm sad that no family wanted to keep this treasure, but happy that I can spruce it up and set it out for a whole new family & generation to enjoy.

It does need some repairs, but most of that is handstitching several unsewn seams, not repairing holes.  Simple handwork while I'm watching Christmas movies on my holiday break!  It has been stored in a cedar chest and is really pretty pristine for its age.  I'm hoping a soak in the tub and careful drying (after it's repaired) and it will be ready to hang over a nice quilt rack.  Which I don't have yet.  Something to add to my flea market list!

In other news...it's the boy's birthday today.  My handsome boy is 17.  How time flies...

Happy birthday to my 'little' comedian (he's about 6'3, so not so little anymore).

You can see the unwrapping of the gift involved lots of fur help.  Last night I laughed so hard at something he did (unintentional slapstick), I honestly thought I was going to wet myself.  My side ached for a good hour.

Love you G.

Crochet Rag Rug: In Progress pt 2

My rag rug is progressing along quite nicely.  It's about the size of a large placemat now.  (I actually haven't worked on it since Saturday though).

I did run out of scrap jelly roll strips and had to tear strips of other color-appropriate fabrics.  I rolled them into a giant rag ball.

We also put our little tree up.  It makes the living room so festive...

In the lower corner you might spot another new winter project emerging... 3.5" squares of vintage feedsack cloth and reproduction 30s prints.  A quilt?  A throw?

I'm not sure, but I have this lovely book for inspiration:

And these two projects from inside its pages are my favorites I think...

 

Although this lovely scrappy quilt from Flickr user Kelli is really tempting too:

photo by: Kelli

Cold weather always brings out the quilter in me...

6.5

Inches that is! Here's my quilt square for the PatternReview.com Friendship Quilt '09!!


I used a free foundation pieced sewing machine block from Quilters Cache. You can get the pattern free HERE.

I love the teeny tiny thread spool. Mine is a tad wonky...but it's so cute I don't care!


I hand embroidered my PR name with red #5 pearl cotton. Also slightly wonky. Ah, handwork.


Notice the ravelly edges? I probably should have embroidered BEFORE trimming down to the required 6.5". Whoops. I think there's still enough edge left to stitch to the sashing.

If you're a member of PR, you should join the fun! I think Deepika has roughly 40 blocks right now. The only requirements are that the finished block should be 6.5" square and they have to be postmarked by January 15.

Go HERE to read all about it!

squared

I've been in a state of non-creative blah-ness since all the Christmas giftiness ended. That always happens after the frenzy of crafting. We can blame Shannon for this new bout of stitchery! We are doing a bit of a sewalong (Normally we agree on a project and then she stitches up the whole damn thing while I am still in the thinking about it stage, hopefully to follow along at some point. You know, one of those kind of sewalongs I do so well at.)

Except HA! Not this time Shannon! I actually SEWED A LONG! Here's a peek of what I got done today:


We're doing a quilt-along. See, I only really know one other person as enamored of quilt fabrics and mix/matching prints as me, and that's Shannon. And since my girl Lu won't let me sew much for her from those fabrics any longer, it was really only a matter of time until the quilting bug bit me! Lucky for me, Shannon & I are two halves of the same nut because we both decided we were ready to try quilting (again) at the same time. (We do this alot, btw.)

We're using this super easy pattern from a couple of other blogs that we're calling "Flea Market Fancy" because, well, that's what those other blogs called it. You can find the directions & measurements here: Crazy Mom Quilts

I'm using a lot of my favorite prints in this one, ones I call "juicy color"prints. I've got two basic colorways going, pinks & blues. But in yummy hot pinks & lilacs and turquoise & seafoams. Today I finished piecing the 10 "blues" blocks.


Don't they look like a pile of candy lying there on the floor? Since most quilting bloggers name their quilts, I've just got to jump on that parade. I've been calling this one Candy Dish. Because it's YUMMY.

Can you see all my favorites popping up in there? Some Amy Butler, and Sis Boom, and Heather Bailey...and assorted other prints from stash. I should have waited two days and I could have used this yardage in the stash contest over at PR. Whoops.

Other than piecing 10 blocks (and yes, Shannon already has her 20 blocks pieced & sashed. But who's counting.) I watched 6 of these:

(ooh, hungry zombie Shannon, are you watching?? Holy cow on the Gaeta-ness.)

And 5 of these:


And did 3 of these:And had 2 of these:And sucked on about a hundred of these:


And now I'm going to have some of this & veg some more in front of the tv:

post Christmas post

As per my usual, I was up til after 11 p.m. Christmas Eve putting the finishing touches on one last present for Lu. Meet "Katherine" (named by Lu upon opening), a sweet patchwork-y dolly. I adapted the Black Apple Doll pattern (free pattern & video tutorial at Martha Stewart). I used Paint.Net to resize the pattern pieces (no copier handy here at home) until she was the desired size; her arm & leg patterns were sized to a different scale than her body for the skinnier leg.



For our photo shoot, dolly bundled up for the winter chill. ;) I used all stash prints for body & clothes and it was fun mix-matching the prints! I used 2 different Amy Butler fat quarters for her body and the first pull on skirt, and an American Jane scrap (left over from the table runner) for her legs. I had to adjust her leg thickness (or thinness rather) because I HAD to use this little apple green print!


I made her another little skirt, pink dotty print, for those days she's feeling especially winsome.

She has wool felt hair and a hand embroidered face. Her "blush" is also pink wool felt, running stitched in place.


Her caplet is plum wool felt, with a matching turned brim hat.


A pale green wool felt scarf completes her winter wear!


Lu absolutely LOVED her. And I LOVE her. I really want a funky one with pink or aqua felt hair. The pattern is already on the cutting table for another!

My mom loved her table runner too! It turned out SO cute. I really wanted to keep this one myself!
I used 11" strips of several jelly roll prints. I alternated the starting strip with a 5.5" cut instead to offset the prints. I used a fleece for batting because I couldn't get to the store (of course if I'm off of work then I'm guarunteed to be sick. This time I suspect flu. It's taken 5 days to feel sub-normal.) I backed the runner with apple green gingham, and the binding is a different American Jane blue dot.

Here's a better shot without so much sun (so you can see the yummy colors & prints).


This runner was my first foray into the world of stipple quilting by machine. It was fun! But hard. I need more practice. Mom doesn't care a whit that it's less than perfect, bless her.

Was Santa good to everyone out in blog land?

neglected!

Poor little blog. Where did the week go? And the week before that? It's nearly the end of November!! Yikes.

I haven't had any garment sewing happening the past week. Not much sewing of any sort in fact. Until today! I kicked my buns in gear, because I have lots of little gifts to stitch up and not a lot of time left to do it.

First up, I started a quilted table runner for my mom. (She doesn't read the blog so there's no spoiling going on here by show & telling.) I'm using the Debbie Mumm Christmas Wishes Year-Long Sampler patterns.

This is the first block I finished, "Friendship" (March). I won't be using the Christmas blocks, since I want it to be for every day.


Don't look tooo closely! I'm not exactly a quilter (yet!) One block down, 4 to go! The nice thing about this project is that every block is different so I won't get bored (that's partly why I'm not a quilter...I have short attention span!)

Then I stuck some fabric in an embroidery hoop to stitch up this cute little Freebie from SWAK Embroidery:


It stitched out perfect! And it was very fast too, less than 10 minutes. Make sure you visit the site to download both the embroidery design & the free project sheet to make this cute little hanging ornament (or hang it off a cabinet knob or dresser drawer or door knob...etc etc.)


I picked up the cutest fabric Saturday to finish an aqua/red version.



These are Urban Chick's 1974 by Moda. Aren't they great?? There were 5 or 6 prints at the quilt shop and I had a hard time choosing just 3. I'll probably be making several of these little hanging ornaments. They're so cute & will make a great teacher/have on hand gift.

I also started a sweet wristlet from leftover Durham fabrics. I used this tutorial for instructions: Splityarn Wristlet Tutorial. There are a bunch of wristlet tutorials out there on the net, so if you don't like this one (it's short & to the point!) you can probably find a more detailed one. Or if you can't, let me knbw & I'll point you in the right direction!

That's it for me this weekend! I've got a couple more projects up my sleeves this week while I'm on Thanksgiving break (only 1 more day of school for me! I'm as bad as the kids but...Yippee!!) For one thing, StickGirl must have a scarf (SG, I got an amazing charm pack for it at Guthrie's!) And two totes, and a couple more wristlets, and some pj pants, and 2 hoodies, and some lace ornaments, and....

You get the picture.