Pretty Ladies

I have been glaringly absent and will try to catch you up later on the things I was working on when I stopped blogging.  But in the meantime, I need help! 

Sometimes you just stumble across things that beg you to take them home and finish them. Today is one of those days.  I bought these from a lady who said she bought them 30 years ago and never had time to do anything with them.  I hope I am the one to bring them to the finish line!

How would you finish these if you were me?  There are so many options!  Here is what I have.  I am only showing a small portion.   I have twenty blocks.  Ten of the blocks are a maiden done with one type of fabric and the other ten with the same fabric only the maiden is faced the opposite direction.  I am not sure if these are authentic 1930's fabrics or 30's reproductions.     

Would you frame them?  Sash them?  Put them in a setting with every other block being something else?  Break them up and make smaller wall hangings rather than a quilt?  What do you envision?
 

I will probably need to gently clean them as well as they are rather dirty.

Here is one fabric I auditioned for potential sashing but I think it's a bit dark and overpowers the light colors of the ladies dresses.  What do you think?

I am anxiously awaiting your input!

1970's!

Completely by accident, my blog post has several things pertaining to the 1970's today.  

On my last blog post, I mentioned that I found a lady selling a lot of her fabric.   . .

She had TONS of it.  Much of it was from the 1970's.  

Now I was not a big fan of that era. orange, gold and avocado?  UGH!!!  

But there is something that draws me to designs that are identifiably from a certain age..

  Even if it's ugly.  Like these.  And some of this is undeniably ugly.  What was I thinking?  

See what I mean?  

But in spite of that, I used some of this fabric today to make a 1970's house!  It's for a quilt along being hosted by Sandra at Mmm Quilts!  I already have a huge collection of these house blocks and should just sew them together already!  But what do I do?  Start making more.  It's some kind of compulsive disorder.   Here is my 1970's house.

The other 1970's thing was a random squirrel that is completely out of the norm for me but I was inspired to make it when a fellow  employee jokingly said I could whip out a quilt over the weekend for one of our co-workers who was having a birthday.  She loves Star Wars.  So I didn't make a quilt but I did make this block!  It has a ridiculous number of pieces in it.  For those of you who aren't familiar, this is R2D2, a robot character who plays an important role in the Star Wars movies.

I've only used the paper piecing technique a few times in my life and I never felt like I really knew what I was doing, but this time I persevered and finally got the hang of it about half way through.  There are so many mistakes in it.  Even so, it does look like what it is supposed to look like!  I need to try something else using this technique before I forget things that I learned to make it work better.

I'm about halfway through putting the binding on Lynda's quilt so I hope to have a finish to show you next time around. 

I finished the 30 little blocks for my Civil War swap  mini quilt swap that look like this .  

These have to be trimmed to 2 5/8 inches so they will look like this.  Once they are sewn together it will make better sense about what the pattern is supposed to look like.

I have more to talk about but will save that for another day!  Hope you had a wonderful Resurrection Day!

And the Winner is . . .

 Layout number four!  If you're just now joining me and you didn't see what the  question was, you can read about that here.  Thank you for all of your input both on Facebook and on the blog.  And here are my blocks rearranged on my design wall to the layout that you voted for.  Oops!  I see a block flipped the wrong way.  Can you spot it?  I haven't taken the time to study this yet to see if I need to switch any of the blocks placement but and I can see some places I think I will switch around.  I need to get going and sew this together for the fundraiser it was created for!

If you've been reading my blog since I hopped back into the blogging world a few weeks ago, you know that I am working on finishing a quilt that a friend of mine received from her mother when she graduated from high school in 1979!  It was all done except for the binding so I am going to finish it up for her so she can finally enjoy it!  Can you believe she still had all of the original fabric it was made with? 

Here are the 1978 fabrics I chose to make the binding.  I cut a bunch of 2 1/2 x 15-ish long strips of each of these and sewed in an alternating order until I had enough inches.

Ironed the binding strip in half . . . 

And here are 400 inches of binding ready to be sewed on Lynda's quilt!  We'll see how long it takes me to get this sewn on.  I haven't started yet but I will very soon!  I hope to have the big reveal in a few weeks.

Last but not least, I mentioned I was working on a mini quilt for a quilt swap.  Here are the 30 little blocks I had so far.  

I haven't made a lot of progress.  But I'll show you the next step.   On opposite sides of each little block will be sewn medium to dark colored triangles.

Then triangles in light to medium shades on the other two sides, then trim the square to 2 5/8" inches.  Ugh.  I hate cutting in 1/8ths.  If I had noticed that before I started making this, I think I would have picked a different pattern.

That's the latest and next time around I will you show what I picked up from a lady selling fabric on Craigslist.  She had a lot OLD stuff and some of the designs are pretty funky!   

Until next time!

Linking to Midweek Maker

Miniature Quilt Swap & Lynda's Quilt

To my fellow quilt fiends who like modern quilts, I apologize but this particular post is all about traditional and vintage quilts so you may want to skip this one.  I follow a blog called Humble Quilts by Lori Dejarnatt.  Once a year she organizes a miniature quilt swap.  I have participated in this twice and am going to do it again this year (at least if I signed up in time).  I haven't heard yet.   Regardless, I am going to make a mini quilt anyway.  I have scraps I need to use up!  This quilt swap is always supposed to be made using fabrics that resemble vintage fabrics from the past (Civil War era or early 1900's).

I have picked the design I want to make and here is the beginning.  I am cutting out a bunch of 1 x 2 inch scraps.  And yes, I know some of you are already thinking I'm out of my mind.  Well, I'm not making a human sized quilt, just a small one.  Doll size!    Here is the first step.

The next step is to sew these little pieces into groups of three as follows.  

I need 30 of these.   Hmm.  Not sure why this picture looks so washed out.  The colors are much deeper than this is showing.  OK, that step is done and here are my 30 little blocks.

Here are a few of my favorites.  As you can see my cutting isn't the most accurate.  

I think I need to get glasses.  

Stay tuned for the next step!  

In the meantime, I have a fun project to share that I am also working on.  After my last post showing my log cabin quilt, I was contacted by a fellow co-worker (and former college classmate) Lynda, who asked me if I would be interested in finishing a quilt that was all done except the binding.  She said her mother made it for her high school graduation (1979) and it never got finished.  She brought it to me and even still has the original fabrics and scraps from her mom!  I'm going to enjoy getting this quilt to the finish line!

Here is sneak peak of the bag Lynda brought to me.  This view is only showing you the back.  I will show you Lynda's quilt next time!  So you have to come back and visit to see it.

  

Cute story about this quilt.  I was walking to my car carrying this bag which has a bunch of yellow showing on the top.  I work at a university and as I was walking, a young man ran up to me and asked me if I needed help carrying that.  All he could see was the yellow and he thought I had big bag full of corn which he knew was not light!  Wasn't that sweet?  He's one of my favorites.  Somebody needs to snap this fellow up!

 Lynda's quilt measures 93" x 102" which means I need to make at least 390 inches of binding. It is made up of very brightly colored calicos in blues, yellows and greens.  I'm not usually a green lover but I really like this green calico.

Here is a closeup of what each block looks like.  Next time I'll show you a picture of the whole quilt

And here are all the scraps pressed and ready to be cut into a scrappy binding.  There is a LOT of fabric here so I will not have any trouble making all the binding I need.  There will be plenty left over for pillows or pillow cases if Lynda wants.

OK, that is as far as I have gone so far.  Next step cutting up strips for binding.  If you enjoy seeing what I am up to and would like to get an e-mail notice when I've posted an update, you can sign up with Follow It over on the right side of my blog.

Next time I'll share the results of the voting about which layout my next quilt quit will be.  I'm going to go with your votes!

Thanks for visiting and come again!

Keeping up the Diary

I haven't posted anything on my blog since October 2020 and I've got a hankerin' to start up again.  If nothing else then just as a kind of diary for myself as to what I've been up to.

I just read my last blog post and I kind of left you hanging without showing my log cabin quilt that I was making for myself!  Here it is!  I'm bummed that I can't find the original picture so I had to take a screen shot off of Instagram for this.  But you get the idea.  

Here are a few closeups

I ended up with a TON of strips left over so I've been sewing those into log cabin blocks for our next church fund raiser  Here is what I have so far and I think I will stop right there.  These are 7 1/2 inch blocks so the quilt will be lap size and about 56 inches square.

Layout Option 1 (traditional Barn Raising layout)

I made this one with gold centers in the blocks instead of red.  I haven't decided if this is the layout I want to use or something else.  Following are some other options.  This is going to be auctioned off so which layout do you think most people would like?

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Would love to get some feedback!  I am going to try and keep up with my "diary" but would love to have some company along the way.  Hope you'll drop me a hello!

Linking to Brag About Your Beauties