Pineapples and Cartwheels ~ February in the Little Quilt Room

Hi guys! It's Friday and February is almost over. It was a distracting month for us all. Short too of course. Besides Covid we have had blizzards, polar vortexes, mounds of heavy snow that linger on here still. The February Thaw [oft touted by a native NYer friend], is overworked and unsuccessful. Then there was the buy a car issue. 

I did get some things done. Currently I'm calling this quilt Cartwheels which I find cuter than Wagon Wheels, though truly its name should be Big Fat Distraction, hahaha. I fell in love with these wonky circles on eBay. They were inexpensive and only I might appreciate their unfortunate construction.

The original maker was apparently a skilled sewer. Nice fine lines of hand stitching. Note the very coarse thread used, like string almost:

And the spokes are more ordered  than one sees at first glance, see the pattern? blue/red/ brown/ stripe/ brown, etc.

red with white on each side.

Some more random than others, but the eye catching ivory spokes are spaced around the circle with some care if not evenly.

One odd thing is the red ground is sewed in four pieces, but they are sewed together before the cheddar circles were added. Why not just a whole square? Short on red perhaps? 

And at the ends of the red piecing, the thread isn't knotted. This has created an issue as they fell apart as I worked with them. The blocks unusually are all exactly 9 1/2" square. Maybe the knots were cut off when trimming?

The sewing is good, the design is, to me, pleasing---but OMG the cheddar circles and centers! Our sewer 100 years ago lacked skills and experience with that challenge. The cheddar pieces are just dreadful---or charming. Unlike some quilters who, when working with old blocks, take apart---redo, recut, resew, FIX 'em!---I work as best I can to retain all the faults and foibles. I could fix those awful centers. But I will not.

I'm dating this to about 1880-1900. The spokes' fabrics are quite antique, maybe earlier scraps, post Civil War. There are calicos, and plaids, usual ikat wovens, some coarse linen homespun. 

This black print with red sprig looks so familiar. I am sure I have it in a repro version, must look.

I pieced the blocks up with antique/vintage turkey red solid. Close enough match.

I wanted the quilt wider.

Now I'm out of red. My plan was/ is to add red to the sides for width; then a cheddar 1" ''stop border'' [frame], then 4''-6" red borders. I plan to use a very pretty blue plaid for the back and binding.

I have no possible red to use unless I use a print. I have four cheddar solids, none quite right. I don't have enough blue plaid even just for the binding. I ordered all from FQS / Fat Quarter Shop, just as things went all to hell in Texas.

Odds are the solids won't match anyway. And FQS ships really slowly at the best of times.

So there Cartwheels hangs. I'm thinking it maybe should be just as is, with a narrow cheddar binding. I kind of like it there and that size. 

Obviously no matter what it will be sadly too big for me to hand quilt

This post is very long. I'll do part 2/ Blue Pineapples separately over the weekend. That was a planned February project and is looking as I hoped. So far...so--back soon!

Have a great weekend.

                                      " Look, mommy! No coat! And...do I spy mud?"

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

Earlier this week we had a now-typical snow-sleet-rain day that cleared late afternoon. The first rainbow of 2021 appeared, a rainbow in the falling snow. A snowbow! Magical. 

The snowy beach was pink too. [not a filter or color edit!]

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Really Truly Finished This Time

Hi everyone! A few weeks ago I put the final-final-final stitches into  two big projects from last year. Yes, P2 is done as is the redo-rescue quilt, Sunflowers, which was an antique quilt top from eBay. I finally had a sunny dry day to take outdoor photos.

Here is P2 completed. The pattern was called Summer Porch by Jan Patek.

I love this quilt. It's a bit too bright for everyday use but I think it's beautiful. So happy, such pretty fabrics! I'm kind of amazed such a lovely item was produced during such a difficult, painful--yes awful!--year. Just goes to show [something].

I've been complaining about quilt projects being so large---for one thing, it's expensive to quilt the big projects, but also it's very costly to supply the backing, since long arm quilters need 4"6" all around of excess fabric to secure a backing in their frames. This means you might need as much as 9 yards? of a single fabric for a backing, and at the current price of approx. $11.oo--well! Big bucks. I got fed up and for P2 I used a queen sized percale sheet from Target. Tiny stars on cream.

It came out great, no seams and as far as I know, no probs with the machine quilting, an allover tossed daisy and clouds pattern.
Details:
Kite with 3-D tail.

Ubiquitous Jan Patek Saltbox  and my Mr Sun.

Kitty on a Stack of books.

Bowl with Flag and Bluebird.

Watermelons.

Whalies, the block that made me fall in love with this pattern.

Pinwheels and other subbed blocks. I enjoy the extra fun of these.

Pinwheel Sun:

This Basket was so pretty but didn't fit between Kitty and Kite. I made it into the label instead.

The Big Sawtooths.

 Fun details and many memories of Mo and my [lonely, but who'd ever know!] summer 2016 on the deck.

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And here is Sunflowers.

The pattern is actually called Russian Sunflowers, after the popular hybrid seeds that brought giant headed sunflowers to the US in the late 1800s. The pattern design predates that, and has other older names, but this is to me the epitome of a field of sunflowers.

I did NOT make this top. It dates from about 1890-1900, was all hand pieced. I repaired it, replaced fragile flaking greens, stabilized the wildly shifting circles.
Probably it was entirely red, cheddar and green, but the red on many for the blocks has faded to tan.

I especially love the blocks where just a few of the ''good'' red, probably turkey red, survived.

The top was far too fragile for hand quilting. Instead I had it custom machine quilted. I asked for wreaths on the circles but the circles were too uneven. My quilter found this wonderful pinwheel design, plus a separate design to fill to the faded olive green spacer areas.

I chose this bright double pink for the backing. I love shocking/ surprising backs.

And the binding is antique turkey red cotton from my collection of old fabrics.

I love how this came out. And I love saving a textile that was crumbling to flakes and shreds. Some purists say not to quilt old tops, but in this case it was a way of giving a beautiful top a chance for survival.

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Finishes are very important to me as a quilter and as a person. I like to finish what I start, I need to feel I have reached a goal. I'm not someone who has dozens of unfinished projects floating around. It's rare I set something aside completely. How about you, do you like the feeling of that last stitch being sewn? Or the non-quilter equivalent? Or do you enjoy the start-up, without the need to finish?

PS Please check out my Dollar Day sale in my etsy shop! Everything must go, sale ends week of 4th of July. Dollar Days and Sidewalk Sales  or My Shop

love

lizzy 

gone to the beach....