How Many Star Points?

Yep, 7 (pieced and then applied on)! This antique quilt was displayed at the Houston Quilt Festival last year. Houston 2008 was a great year for antique/repro quilt lovers. This quilt is a charmer!

Jo Morton #2

Here is another Jo Morton doll quilt that just got bound this weekend. The way that this was presented in the Little Women's club was in cadet blues, and it was wonderful. But...I just had to make mine different, so I chose the greens and blacks from her fabrics. I wish I had just made it in blues!

Basket Wall Hanging

Through most of the 1990's, there was a really nice quilt show in Indianapolis called Quilt America. I think that I made it to that show every year. This basket quilt was purchased there as a kit from Kaye England's shop, Quilt Quarters. The show is gone, and Kaye doesn't own the shop anymore. I made the top, and just didn't love it enough to hand quilt it. This past year, our friend Sandy machine quilted it for me. It hangs on the wall near the door to the sewing room so we are now fast friends. Things change!

Antique Basket Quilt

I saw this sweet basket quilt at La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum in WA. The quilts are exhibited in the 1891 Gaches Victorian Mansion, which is the perfect backdrop for antique textiles. This quilt was draped over a table on the third floor – it made the climb worth the effort. This one’s on my ‘To Do’ list!

Jo Morton

One of the local quilt shops has offered the Jo Morton classes for the last few years. I participated a couple of years ago. This is a little one that I like very much. I must confess that the one aspect of quilting that I really don't care for is binding. Quilts end up waiting for some time to be bound, and I do them in batches. Such was the case with this one. I just love this greyed blue fabric that Jo did in one of her lines.

UFO's from Gwen's Beaver Island Retreats

Jan and I have attended Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat a few times (lucky us!). The following UFO's are from two of those retreats.

The first UFO is from the 'Pieces and Parts' retreat. Prior to the retreat we made random blocks of a complimentary size (2", 3", 6"...) with no thought on how they would be used. In advance of the retreat, I made the stars, red-green hourglass (left/top border), 9 patch (right/bottom border), and some strata (lengths of fabric strips sewn together - used here to frame the stars).

Here's a close-up of the 9 patch border on the right. I love the pinwheel/broken dishes tucked between the 9 patch blocks.

And what do you do when your border isn't long enough? You just add one more strip (green center).

The next UFO is from the Medallion retreat. I love this piece, but haven't looked at it in quite awhile. I think I'll leave it up on the design wall to figure out what the next round will be (or call it quits and make a wall hanging out of it).

This is a close up of one corner. Sorry it's so large, but I can't delete it without deleting the whole message (or at least I haven't figured out how to do that yet), so we're stuck with this.

I have finished a project from one of the retreats, but I'll save that for another post.

Bye for now!

Greetings

I thought that I would share my Railroad Crossing quilt today. It hangs on this walnut hymnal rack in my kitchen. The smaller, crib sized quilts are alternated here from time to time. The rack, actually, is upside down from how it was originally used on the back of a pew. This creates a shelf on the top, and I have some of my vintage photos displayed here. I'm always on the lookout for photos of people reading, or with books. Photos of women, or girls are best. Also, I seek out any photo with a quilt in it. These are harder to find.

The Railroad Crossing is a traditional Amish design which I interpreted in patterned fabrics. I liked this idea so much that I reproduced a published Amish crib quilt in the same manner.When it came time to quilt this, I chose typical Amish quilting designs. You can still see the chalk lines, as this hasn't been washed. By today's standards, it is a no-no to not remove the markings. It certainly doesn't bother me. If this were an antique quilt, the markings would be a bonus to show how little, if any, use the quilt received. Why the change?

I'm having trouble getting my pictures where I want them. Still learning!

9 Patch Strings

Remember the boring 9 patch from my last post? Well, I finished the 36 alternate blended 9 patch and made one string 9 patch. I've got a little sample for you to look at. This will be a leader-ender project. Each string 9 patch has 4 sets of 5 strings and there are 49 blocks - 980 strings. You won't be seeing this one again for awhile, but I'll be working on it.

See ya later, Alligator.

Introduction

This being the first post of a tandem blog, I will introduce myself. I'm Jan, and I am a lover of antique quilts, and a maker of antique quilt reproductions. We are both blogging novices, and Vicki is tutoring me on posting. Bear with me as I find my way. These are pieces from my design wall:

This is a leftover from a Beaver Island Retreat with Gwen Martson. The theme that year was "Applique". My project was a four-block Eagle quilt that was started in a previous retreat. This was the center cutout from that piece. It is on my design wall to try to decide how to quilt it. Stop back in the future to see the Eagle top. It still needs a sawtooth border, so don't hold your breath!

Here are a couple more recent projects. The first is based on a quilt I saw years ago at Quilts Plus in Indianapolis. The name is Jewel Box, and this is just my sample blocks. It finishes to 4 inches.

This is my Double 4 Patch, in progress. This will probably be a crib size quilt. I am always saying that I just want to make crib and doll quilts, but somehow they mostly end up large.

New Beginnings

Well, we're plunging into the unknown waters of blogland. We're tag-teaming to increase our chances of timely posts.

We always have a block exchange going. The current one is 25 patches. This is a small sampling of blocks to date - finished size 5".

I have lots of UFO's. One of the ongoing leftover projects is Log Cabin using 1 1/4" scrap strips.

I've been searching for a project to use those tiny 1" crumbs that are the end-of-the-line strips. I recently was in Atlanta and visited Sweet Home Quilt Co in Conyers, GA. They had a sample quilt that was the spark I needed. This is the unassuming alternate block (shaded 9 patch). Doesn't look like much, but I have confidence that things will work out. I've been cutting and ironing on the back porch - it's like sewing in a treehouse!

Well, that's it for my first post. Glad you stopped by for a quick chat!