Thursday, June 18, 2009

Reconstruction begins

Since I have to work ALL weekend (ugh!), and my hubby will be out of town recruiting, I'm taking my kids to my mom's house for the weekend. While there, I want her to see and know that I've been working on her mom's/grandmom's quilt. However, I didn't want her to freak out when she saw all the bits and pieces of quilt that remain as I rip seams, so I starting sewing some of the trimmed down pieces back together last night. I find it really hard to work with fabrics with so little contrast. I keep telling myself that 70 or so years ago when this quilt was constructed, it DID have contrast. It was pretty obvious from the wear (holes!) and the much darker fabrics in the seam allowances that this quilt had been put to hard and frequent use. Luckily, the quilt was scrappy to begin with, so I don't need to be particular about how I put it back together. You'll notice that I am putting like-fabric triangles together to make diamonds in each block, though.

The finished square size is 1.5", so each of these blocks is 6" finished (6.5" as you see them). One thing I noticed is that the fabrics are VERY stretchy and hard to work with. I don't know if she cut things on the bias or if older fabrics tend to not hold their shape well, but I am already preparing myself for a quilt that is not quite square. (Who am I kidding, none of my quilts are quite square! At least I have an excuse this time.)