I *should* be quilting. I have a quilt in the hoop, the top I made for my husband for Christmas is waiting, and numerous others waiting too. BUT I can’t hand quilt all day. Each stitch comes with a tiny pin prick on the finger that’s on the bottom side of the quilt and after a while my fingers get too sore. For now I’ll just quilt in the evenings. 
So there you have it. My excuse for starting something new.
Lori of Humble Quilts has a vintage quilt that’s made with cheddar. I love it. It’s kind of a cross between a Double Irish Chain and an Ocean Waves. It’s made scrappy. What’s not to love?
Well…she decided to make a scaled down version. A doll quilt..AND she’s doing it as a quilt along! How could I resist?
I pulled some fabrics out of my stash.
I wasn’t sure about the shirting that I pulled, but it was white with a bit of blue so I thought it would work?
Step one.
Step three is supposed to be posted next week. Lori is giving us plenty of time to keep up.
Once I had this done and pinned up on the wall it was clear what the next step would be and I couldn’t resist. I went ahead and pieced the setting blocks.
My blocks aren’t sewn together yet, I just had to see how my doll quilt looked.
Hmmm…I’m not sure? That shirting is a bit bright..too blue..I dunno? I may want to tea dye the quilt to make it look older?
I sew in the dining room and it looks nice with my Blue Willow dishes…maybe it will become a table topper?
I loved doing this little quilt top. It’s kind of like eating potato chips. .. I can’t stop at one. I want to do a second that has lower contrast and warmer colors.
Today I’m pulling a quilt from the quilt top cupboard. It’s hard to put an accurate date on it, because the fabrics are all solids. The cheddar and Turkey red, along with the weave of the cream makes me feel that this quilt dates to around 1860-1880?
It has a thick cotton batting and the ties give it a tufted look?
Today the top I’m pulling from the quilt top cupboard is a pink and cream Snowball. It dates to the 1930’s-1940’s. I bought this at a local garage sale for $6.
This top has some very light age spots in the cream fabric which I feel will soak out. I intend to hand quilt this.
The templates that came with this quilt are amazing to me. They are cut from a fairly thick sheet of brass. Someone was supportive of this quilter of yesteryear! It was very common to make templates from the cardboard of food packaging, but these templates are like the Rolls Royce of templates. I have never seen anything like them. I wonder how they were cut so smoothly..and by whom?
Today I’m pulling a quilt from the quilt top cupboard.
I date the quilt top to after the 1880’s, but it’s a scrappy style quilt and has fabrics that are a bit older.
The red fabric used to set the blocks together is a crimson red and has little black sprigs on it.
I’m including a lot of photos of the fabrics, because I know that’s what those of us that like the older quilts really want to see. The style of this quilt is very simple. It’s a diamond block sewn together as a nine patch. I couldn’t find a name for the blocks done that way in my reference books.
Maybe someone made a Lone Star quilt and had left over pieces? They wouldn’t have let them go to waste? OR..maybe the maker of this top wanted to do a variation of the usual nine patch made from squares? It’s evident that the maker had good sewing skills and maybe she wanted to show them off a bit?
There are homespuns, shirtings, stripes, and a few larger scale florals. There’s crimson reds, cadet blue, a bit of indigo, and lots of warm browns and dark tans. I like the brown and red combo and it was popular in quilts from this era.
I quilted this top using cotton batting. I stitched in the ditch on the diamond piecing and stitched long lines down the zig zag setting to emphasize it. In this era it was common to quilt a fan pattern across the whole top, quilting across seams as if they weren’t there. I kept my quilting simple because the red fabric is a bit fragile.
Here is a peek at the backing I used. It’s a homespun and is what might have been used if this top had been quilted when it was new. When dating a quilt, it is dated by the newest fabric in it. So..technically, this not an antique quilt. If it were for sale it would have to be advertised as an antique top finished at a later date.
These last pics are left over bits and pieces that I had to edit out because the red fabric is too damaged, or weak to have been used. I’ve kept all of the pieces though. Maybe in the future I could use them to repair another top? OR I could take the red away and make a second quilt using a different fabric?
