Vintage Quilt Finished

 This is a pretty top that I bought at a local antique/junk barn around the corner from me.  I paid $25 for it two years ago.

I need another quilt like a hole in the head, but I just could not walk away from the poor thing.  It's partially hand pieced and partially machine pieced.  To respect the era I used 100% cotton batting instead of my usual 80/20 blend.  That makes it a little more "flat".

You'll note the Mennonite Mistake (also known as a Humility Block) in the bottom right hand corner - that one pieced corner block is turned the wrong way.

I just happened to have (a common expression which is often heard spoken by most quilters, lol) a pink that was one shade darker than what the maker used for the sashings & border.  It was perfect for the binding, and I'm currently about half way through the hand stitching on that.

Here's the back.  I was a wee bit shy and had to piece in a bit of different fabric in one corner.  Nothing I plan on worrying about, though.  The list of my own quilts waiting for quilting is now down by one!

I had a couple people mention to me that my last blog post had a BIG FAT MISTAKE where I mentioned I was planning to sew through the Superbowl last Sunday.  Ahem.  I am now aware that the big event is THIS weekend, and I'm all prepared.  Two charm paks, one pattern, one card table, one sewing machine.  And a frozen lasagne.

It would be nice if I could be all newsy-like and tell you what I've been up to but...yeah, I got nothin'.  I'm doing a LOT of reading and a LOT of tv watching.  I did order seeds tonight - normally I go on a field trip to the seed store and spend a lovely hour or two wandering the aisles.  Do a little inner eye-roll when my bill adds up to almost $100 (saving sooo much money!! pfftt.) then head on home with my treasures.  This year I am doing a parcel pickup and my scheduled date is MARCH 8th.  WTH?  sigh. Ontario is still under stay-at-home orders, which should be ending late next week I think.  However this morning I read two different news articles, and one of them indicated the government is second-thinking and may leave the orders in place for a while.  I guess we'll find out when we find out.

COVID-19 UPDATE

WORLDWIDE:  106 million cases, 2.31 million deaths, 349,200 new cases Feb. 2/21

USA:   26.9 million cases, 460,000 deaths, 129,600 new yesterday

CANADA: 801,000 cases, 20,702 deaths, 4,022 new yesterday

ONTARIO: 280,000 cases, 6,435 deaths, 1,784 new yesterday The current stay-at-home order is in effect until Feb. 11th at the moment.

HAMILTON:  9,470 cases, 265 deaths, 63 new yesterday

Tackling a Sampler Quilt

Usually, the first thing I do with a sampler quilt is take a photo of it.  Looking at the quilt on a computer screen gives me the opportunity to see the distribution of colours and shapes.  And sparing no expense (OMG, seriously!!  Do you know how expensive INK is for the printer???), I will also print this out so I can doodle some quilting ideas.  It is always a good idea to take a GOOD LOOK at the piecing here - you may find that some of the patches have been stitched in the wrong orientation.  You still have time to fix that - it is much easier before you load the quilt.  Trust me on that.  See HERE.

Step one will be s.i.d. the borders, the setting triangles, and the black chain.  I'm using black thread for that.  And my favorite ruler Janet Lee's Favorite.  This is actually my second of these rulers and I think I'll be buying a third.  It seems they are 'consumables', especially when you zig when you are supposed to zag and take a large chunk out of the edge.  Thankfully said chunks have never come flying at my eyes.

Then, I fire up the IQ and stitch the motifs in the setting triangles.  Pretty, eh?

The IQ is also used for the border.  As you can clearly see (ha ha, pfftt) this border design matches the above motif.

Okey dokey - we are finished with the black thread.  Changing over to olive green... I just love that little border design - Bluebells by My Creative Stitches.

And now we move on to the blocks, with olive thread.  More s.i.d. and some, I dunno, emphasis quilting.  Through the whole quilt, in every bit of that red print I am doing 1/4" inside quilting.

The centers of the blocks are all getting an IQ motif. That is an interesting process because the block centers come in four different sizes and the motif should FIT the area, while leaving a bit of negative space around the edges.

Once the olive green quilting is finished I move on to the cream thread.  For hours and hours of cross-hatching.  Can you say "hello, massage therapist"?

If you click on the pics to look at a large version, you may notice that I have NOT quilted the side borders.  Usually, I quilt the sides as I progress down the quilt.  In this case it would have been done when I was using the black thread.  Then again when I had the olive thread loaded.  This definitely leaves tiny spots on the back where you can see the stops & starts of the stitching as the thread is anchored.  On this particular quilt, the motif was too long to fit in the available space.  When I am ALL THROUGH with this x-hatching I will take the quilt off and reload it with the short sides attached to the leaders and do those other borders.  At that point the whole quilt will get a once-over.  I will likely find a couple of spots where I have missed a motif, or missed some s.i.d. (I have already found some, actually), or neglected to clip some thread tails.  Hopefully I won't find any tiny pleats on the back - they can be a nightmare to fix.

IN THE MEANTIME, here is my salute to spring.  A plastic bag.  Ha ha ha - yes.  But it is covering up my geranium cuttings.