u/elev8or_lady

My last EPP project (a GFG quilt) is just about to be basted, but I had to order some yardage to complete the backing.

So…in the meantime who wouldn’t want yet another new WIP?! Not me! I have had this Tula Nova kit for a coupled years now, and finally decided to get started! It’s intimidating but I am in no hurry.

Y’all lmk if you have any words of advice.

I bought an old freestanding wooden sewing box at an estate sale today. It was packed with old buttons, thread, crochet hooks, beads, and the like. I’ve been sewing and crafting a long time, but these tools have me stumped. What are they for?

Please excuse my dirty nails, the sale and most of the stuff in it was grimy.

I finished a new quilt top today! This one has a bit of a back story:

A few weeks ago, I was culling through some of the old quilt books I have, trying to make room on my shelf. Inside one of them, which had assuredly been thrifted some time ago, I discovered an article that had been carefully pulled from the 11/03/1981 edition of Woman’s Day magazine.

The article focuses on an 86-yo quilter in New Mexico (the city isn’t named). The writer seems much more interested in her self-reliance and pluck than on her quilting, but she did include a couple of photos of her work!

I was so blown away by the quilt on her frame (last pic) that I almost immediately decided to make my own version of it! I absolutely love her color palette of dark greens, browns, and blues, punctuated with occasional bright yellows. All of the scrappy colors are anchored with red block centers and cornerstones.

The pattern is not complicated (9-patch on point), but it’s one I hadn’t done before. My version has more white in it than hers, though I think the resemblance is there! I will plan to hand quilt this one, as she did hers. I wish I could see hers in its full glory! Thanks for the inspo, Quirl. I wish I could have met you in person!

Edited to fix some weird copypasta issues:

I bought a box of vintage quilts in an online auction. Would you like to unbox them with me? This is post 2 of 2; the first two quilts were posted yesterday.

1. The box had three surprises in it! They really did just cram them in like this too.

2. So this quilt seems like it was made from factory scraps or maybe salvaged bedding. A lot of 1970s fused polyester decorator fabric. I like the colors, but that’s about it. I’ll probably donate it. It’s roughly twin size, and machine pieced and quilted.

3. Okay so this is the first of the quilts I bid on! I liked the look of some of these prints, especially that yellow calico. It’s also roughly twin size. This one is hand pieced and hand quilted, and from the looks of it several hands did the quilting. Some of the stitches are impossibly small and neat, while others are…not. Haha! I love that.

4. Check out this rooster! He’s supposed to be the center of the show, but just to his left is someone I recognized right away….

5. Evel Knievel?! On my quilt?! This is amazing. There are several scraps of this incredible print scattered throughout the quilt.

6. MORE fussy cut Evel Knievel. I cannot get over this.

7. The back of the Evel Knievel rooster quilt. It feels like a poly cotton blend. It’s a great print for a quilt back! My only issue with this quilt is that it desperately needs a DEEP clean. Seeing how much of it is polyester, I typically wouldn’t hesitate to throw it in the washing machine. (This quilt has definitely seen the inside of a washer before.) BUT there is a big tear in the top of the quilt and some of the batting is exposed. I’m still debating how to clean it, bc I really don’t want to deal with an all-day soak in the tub. We shall see.

8. Okay THIS is the quilt top (it’s not finished) that made me want to bid on this auction. It measures appx 55”x80” and is improv pieced with a LOT of feedsack prints. It would be fun to finish this one!

9-11. So many cute prints! The green calico! The sweet turquoise feedsack! The red and blue floral! All the ginghams! I am so lucky to have snagged this one. Not to mention all the others! What an incredible box of goodies!! ❤️

I bought a box of vintage quilts in an online auction. Would you like to unbox them with me? Let’s go!

1. The box was bigger than I expected bc I thought there would only be two quilts. Once I started pulling them out though, I realized there were FIVE in the box! These first two were total surprises.

2. It’s a baby quilt! Machine pieced and hand quilted. Measures appx 40”x43”.

3. I love this sweet floral print and the red/pink gingham border. The quilt block seems to be a Jacob’s Ladder variation. It’s self-bound with the backing print, which is…

4. SPECTACULAR! The cherries! The birds! The strawberries! The butterflies! And those amazing purple flowers! It’s one of the best large scale vintage prints I’ve ever seen.

5. Next up is another baby quilt. This one is also machine pieced and hand quilted. It has a very 1980s country vibe with the French country blue and dusty mauve prints. It measures appx 45” square.

6. Except it’s not square! It has this awesome fan piecing along the edges, creating beautiful scallops. It’s also constructed in a really unusual way. There is a very thin batting in the middle, but the top and bottom were stitched together along the edges, right sides together, and then turned right side out to finish…and THEN quilted. There is no binding. It results in this beautifully finished edge. The quilting is really fancy and well done too.

So that’s all for now, I will post the other quilts tomorrow! For now I’m super happy with these two surprises!

Edit: Thank you so much, fellow Reddit quilters!! Seems I managed to receive an older copy of the book as a gift, and I guess new copies have the link (below) to the online patterns. Thanks again, everyone!!

OP: I love quilt history and especially love feedsack prints and vintage stuff in general. I was super excited to discover the Farmer’s Wife 1930s sampler book! I added it to my Amazon wishlist, and my mom gave it to me for Xmas last year.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I realized the patterns are not actually in the book, but rather, on the enclosed CD. My laptop doesn’t even have a CD drive. I took the CD to work and tried it on my desktop, but the software is unreadable. A window pops up with just a bunch of gibberish—it’s unreadable because CD technology is already obsolete.

I’m not asking for any technical/IT assistance. But I would like to know, for those of you who have done this quilt recently, how did you access the patterns? Did you have printed copies? This is so frustrating.

Current WIP on the design wall. These glorified nine patch blocks are a real challenge! I am currently piecing them into rows, and then attaching one row to the next. But I think next time I would like to try a different technique. These super curvy S-seams between the rows mean I am still only stitching one block at a time, and then stopping to pin the next block as I go. The end result is okay, but I think it could be better.

Eventually I want to make a double wedding ring quilt, but not until I have figured out a smoother way of bringing these curved blocks together. I would love any tips from someone who has pieced all curved blocks before! Thanks, friends!

I have been kicking around the idea for a patriotic red white and blue quilt (I’m in the US) for quite some time, but I hadn’t been able to decide on a pattern. I am not a fan of sawtooth stars, or flag quilts, both of which feel a bit old fashioned and jingoistic to me. I wanted something that had a fireworks type vibe, and worked well with vintage style prints, but that I could also piece on the sewing machine.

This week I remembered that I have templates for the glorified nine patch, and a lightbulb flickered on! I guess if I’m going to make a quilt memorializing my country’s 250 years, I need to get started.

This is still very much in the early planning stages, but the blocks come together really quickly! If anyone has tips on attaching the curved rows to each other, I’m happy to hear them! This will be my first quilt with all curved blocks.