Saturday, August 25, 2018

Mystery Quilt From 2018 Arizona Retreat

This is my stretched chains mystery quilt finally completed. Ellen taught this as a mystery at the retreat in Phoenix this past February. I was on the fence but came up with the perfect color scheme. My friend Misha and I shared Faris as we needed about 70 strips WOF to make the quilt. We each cut 2 strips of 40 unique fabrics and shared so we each ended up with 70 something fabrics. The colors were blue and green with a little purple. My background color was a cream and Misha did black.

Here is the photo I used to tempt Misha and she lover the idea.

Some of the ladies had finished tops at the end of the retreat but I was not one of those.  I took a few extra months to put mine together.

Here it is on the home streach with the chains laid out.

My friend Mel did one in cool colors with 30's fabrics. She finished her top at the retreat and sent it home with me to quilt. I decided it needed feathers.





I finally got my top done and loved the feathers on Mel's and decided to fo them on my quilt.


Here is a photo of both quilts. The design is not the same.

This is the one I quilted for Misha. She did a different layout on hers which was stars. It is a beautiful design.

A closeup of one of Misha's stars.

Here is my finished quilt. I had a fun day on the beach doing a photoshoot of two quilts and a couple of totebags. Stay tuned for the othe quilt in a upcoming post. The bags are the post before this one.

Friday, August 3, 2018

Vintage UFO


There are many reasons why some UFOS never get finished. Take for example this lovely pile of 24 vintage blocks. They were gifted to me years ago by a quilting friend. I am not sure where she got them but she decided she was not inspired enough to do anything with them. Since my first love of quilting was antique and vintage quilts I gladly accepted them. Every few years I would pull them out look at them and put them away again.

They were most likely pieced using scraps from garment making. There are 40's, 50's and maybe some 60's fabrics. Possibly some might even be newer. The background muslin is thin. The blocks are machine pieced except for one. The one hand pieced is more precise and has a black circle appliquéd to the center. This makes me wonder if this was the first block and the project got put away for some time or a second person got it. The fabrics are the same so it was likely from the same scrap collection.

The problem is that the machine piecing is not well crafted. The seams are from a quarter to an eighth of an inch. Points are lopped off and the edges are as much as a quarter inch off.

I have often thought I could remake this project and have shown it to a few friends who think I am nuts. I threw these blocks in with the stuff I took in the RV with me a year ago and figured if I was ever in need of something to fill the time I could do something with them.

Well such a day finally came. We are going tent camping for the weekend and I had no handwork project to grab. I saw these and realized that the only prep required was a couple bags and Jack my trusty seam ripper was all  I needed. Ok......here goes nothing. Step one pick them apart. I'll let you know how that goes.



You can see the yellow point comes all the way to the edge of the next piece.....no that will no do!