Vintage Quilts and more Road Trip Souvenirs.

We've been on a road trip.  B, Abby and I went to Montana, Idaho, and Washington.  It's a good thing we had the car...so many "souvenirs" to bring home!

This little basket quilt circa 1860 is a cousin to large 1850's Ohio basket quilt with the saw tooth border (below)

that we bought many years ago.  Same era, style and similar colors.  I loved the oak leaf appliqued vine around the edges of this one.  Rebecca's Antiques in Hailey, Idaho west of Sun Valley Resort is not to be missed.  She's only open two weekends of the year but well worth the trip.

The Hailey antique fair yielded two more linen/flax European grain sacks for our collection.  We were thrilled to find this one with both the Mr.s and my monogram.  How could we leave this one behind?

 It's amazing to me that a farm woman spent so much time making this beautiful eyelet by hand for the rope to go through.  What amazing workmanship for a farm implement.  Just look at the two different colors of twine woven together for the closing rope.

MaryJane Butters (of MaryJane's Farm fame) has a retail store in Couer d'Alene Idaho.  I couldn't resist bringing home the metal calendar or the blue gingham sheet sets.  

My husband lived in Germany for several years and he brought home a sliding wall calendar that hung in our families' mountain cabin.  The girls used to love sliding the dates on that calendar.  It was how we could tell when we had visited the cabin last.  This is a new version of that calendar for the Homestead.  I think it will be fun for the next generation of little visitors to flip the dates on this one.

Last week was spent getting the fallen tree cut up.  Now I'm off to sew bridesmaid dresses.  It's good to be home....Lot's to do!

The silk purses (or my new-ish neckrolls)...

Remember those old daybed pillows?   Here they are after their "surgery".  They're in front on the bed.

I chose new fabrics for the pillows based on the 1850's antique album quilt on the bed.  I quite like the neck rolls now.  They are clean and the perfect size.  Best of all, there is no more lumpy stuffing. The old rolls from the day bed had removable covers but were too large for the bed.  So after removing the old shams, I unpicked the pillow and salvaged some of the batting that was used to stuff the old pillows and discarded the rest.  I unpicked the round fabric from one end and cut 2 inches in length from each pillow so that two neck rolls would fit across our antique bed (the previous owners had a carpenter widen the bed to queen size). I'll tell you the amazing bed story another time.  Then I stitched the round ends back on the tube halfway around (right sides together) and turned them right side out, leaving a hole to insert the new batting.  Next, a quick trip to the fabric store for batting on a roll, which I purchased for $8.00. I only needed 2 yards and it was on sale. Hooray!

I put the old batting inside the new, and stuffed it into the cushions.  As you can see in the photo above left, I turned the raw edges of the circle to the inside, basted them shut and then slip stitched the cushion together, enclosing the batting.  Neck rolls can be purchased at any linen store and they are fairly inexpensive or you can make your own inside pillow using scrap fabric. My New custom pillow inserts cost me only $8.00 for the batting as I used the old fabric again.  You can't beat that for value. Making the fabric covers is easy, quick, and great value for my time.

Another trip to the fabric store yielded some sale fabric for the removable covers.  It as my lucky day.  I made some tiny green piping with another new fabric and sewed it between the two print fabrics.
The piping cost just a few dollars, as I had the string in my stash.  For about $20.00 I got the pillows rebuilt and refurbished, and made entirely new covers and it only took a few hours.

I'm quite happy with the look and I like that I can remove the cases for laundering.  My husband loves his new neck roll for reading at night, and I have my eye on a woven indigo fabric for another set to match other quilts.  The Euro shams and down comforter cover are white Irish Linen, so changing out the quilts and pillows lets me switch up the bedroom color scheme with minimal effort and cost.

I love having matching pillows with my quilts!  It was a good day's work.

I'll be back with a tutorial for making pillow roll covers, if you're interested.   Check back for instructions.

I'm back from QuiltFest 2012

I have been away teaching at Quilt Fest.  It was a fun week but soooo busy.  So busy that I didn't even get photos of my class.  I had 24 students and 3 wonderful helpers from my Quilt Group (a big thank you ladies).  One of my students, Denise of PiecedBrain Blog did post a photo of the class and one of my rugs.  I'm thought you might want to check out her blog as well.  She has made some really fun quilts and took a lot of classes at Quilt Fest.

One of the highlights was the quilt show; particularly the trunk show by Jodi Warner.  Jodi has been designing patterns and making original quilts for years.  I loved her "Through Mac Gregor's Garden" quilt.  The detail is amazing.  Just look at the three-dimensional aspects.  Isn't the rabbit clothing beautiful?  And the quilting stitches are tiny, even, and plentiful.  This is not a large quilt but just a "smallish" wall hanging.

Stop by for more amazing photos from Quilt Fest 2012.

Pillowcases for the Flour Quilt

I have been braiding a blue rug and I need fabric, but  I am determined not to buy any.  The pieces of leftover fabric I used to back the Flour Sack Quilt had more than I remembered.  So before stripping it for the rug, I made up two sets of Pillowcases to go with the quilt.  The Prairie Paisley print is continental style and has a pocket to totally enclose the pillow.  The plaid cases are just a standard case.  I think they will look good on the bed with the quilt.

Some of you dear readers have asked for a finished photo of the quilt hanging in the Show.  How about half a quilt hanging in the show?  My apologies to Erin.  For some reason the I-phone photo that your Father took cut you off when it uploaded.  Here's part of the quilt and one daughter, ladies.  The Springville show has ended but it will be hanging for two weeks in St. George at the Utah Quilt Fest and then a curator has requested for it another show at an exhibit for the Frontier Homestead Project in a state park museum.  That exhibit runs for 3 months and maybe I can get a better photo of it then.  It's becoming better traveled than I.  I'm so glad to be finished with it so I can move on to another quilting project.

Flour Sack Quilt Reveal

 

It's finally done and the newest embroidered label is quilted on the back.  I dated and attached a label when I pieced it but since it's now 2012, I added another label and attached a hanging sleeve.  It's going to a quilt show soon and then it will live on the bed in our Granary.

I must admit I love this quilt in spite of the many times I wanted to pull the plug on it.  You may remember that it all started with some printed flour sacks my husband found in an antique store. He hates that I added this part of the quilt's history to the label.  He says it makes him sound "odd" (his words, not mine).  After all, "who has a flour sack collection?"  I say it was "genius" to collect them with a specific purpose in mind.  He had an idea of a quilt from the time he first saw the sacks in that tiny town in Idaho.

He started buying sacks with geographical and family significance.  He was persistent with the quilt idea and I finally agreed to make him one as long as he agreed it could be a leisurely project.  I was true to my word; it took 3 years to complete.  I didn't work on it consistently and the hand quilting took me a lot longer than I planned on.

I used quilting thread for the tiny stitches and heavy linen thread to do big stitch quilting and cross stitches along the edges of the blocks.  The sacks were "wonky" with different fabric thicknesses and ranged in size from 3 lb. to 100 lb. bags.  Some were full of holes and needed patching.

Old and faded, some bags still had a bit of flour in them. Eww!!!  In a nutshell,  it was huge challenge.

But in the end, I am happy with it.  I hope he is too.

OOPS!!!!

I have been working on a project for almost 3 years.  I was just starting to get excited because the final label is going on as soon as I get it framed.  The sleeve is basted for hanging and after this one last task  I can put this project aside and move on to something else.

OOPS!!!  Notice anything wrong?  I obviously didn't pick it up right away.

No finished photos for you today.

Hand Quilting

I'm taking a little break from hand quilting this.

Because my fingers look like this.  That's not blood, just ragged skin, and it does not hurt, believe it or not.

Do you notice the shiny spot on the end of my finger?  It's this.

Greatest tip I ever learned for hand quilting!  I put a drop or two on my finger before quilting and it does protect my fingers.  No more blood and holes (just ragged skin).  If you are a hand quilter, stop into your local pharmacy aisle by the bandaids and pick up a bottle.  It also works as a bandage too, should you forget to put it on when you begin to quilt.

Quilts, Quilts, and more Quilts

We've been traveling this summer and I've been photographing some great quilts in museums.  I  thought you might like to see them too.

Block Party

Do you ever have a couple of weeks that just fly by?  Where have the last two gone?  I haven't been posting at all and can't quite figure out where my days have gone.

I did manage to work on my blocks for my quilt groups friendship block exchange.  Everyone is making 18 blocks of the same block pattern.  Then we exchange for each others blocks.  A focus fabric was chosen for cohesiveness in color and every one's block had to be any basket block on point.   I can't wait to finish mine.  I'm ready to move on to other projects.  First I had better vacuum the sewing room floor, don't you think?

Linked to Fresh Clean and Pure Friday.