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.)

No time for actual sewing

I had company over the weekend, and while we had a fantastic time, that means not much happened on the quilting front. I managed to do a bit more seam ripping on my grandmother's quilt while sitting and talking on the front porch, and a bit more squaring up after everyone left on Sunday evening, but that is it. I need to start sewing so I feel like I have made some progress. Especially since I was traveling the weekend before, and I haven't used my sewing machine in several weeks.

While I was traveling, however, I stopped by a quilt shop to try to find some brown fabric to finish the binding on a quilt that I am finishing for a woman who started quilting about 10 years ago but then got distracted, decided she wasn't going to do it anymore, and sent me all of her books and notions to clear space in her house. As payment, I finished the hand quilting on her tablerunner, and put on the binding. I am binding with the leftover backing fabric, but I was just a bit shy of enough. I have been stopping in every quilt shop I pass to find matching fabric, and I finally got lucky. Jason was with me, so he picked out some backing fabric for his Halloween quilt that he is entering in the fair this year.

And I couldn't resist picking up a few fabrics for myself - I did a great job of not buying any fabric last year, but I have fallen off the "no-buy" wagon. I need some new stuff in the stash because I am getting tired of making quilts out of the same old fabrics. (At least, that is how I am justifying my last couple of purchases to myself.)


I also stopped by my mother-in-law's, the one who introduced me to quilting in the first place. She does everything by hand, including the piecing. She showed me the quilt she is currently hand quilting, and then gave me an extra block from that quilt. (It is square, really. It was just kinda balled up and I didn't press it before taking the picture.)
Cool! I plan to make an orphan block quilt one day, and this will definitely make it in there.

And then, I just stopped by the library during late lunch to find something to read. One of the employees there saw me and said, "Hey, I've got something for you! Well, not here with me at work, but I've got something for you!" I missed the Guild meeting this weekend, but it turns out that some scraps were collected and earmaked for ME! Gotta love being known as the scrap gal!

Torn!

I worked some more on my grandmom's quilt last night, ripping seams, squaring up the squares, and playing around a bit with placement. (I should have been CLEANING since I have company coming for the weekend, but it is my sister/friend and her kids, and she is the kind of friend who loves me for me, dirty house and all, so I didn't bother with the panicky last-minute house cleaning that I usually do when I have company. Besides, with 4 kids, ages 7 and under, the house is going to be be a sticky mess by the end of the visit.)

Anyway, back on topic. As I was playing around with placement, I was thinking that what I'd really like to do is add some color. Since the fabric is old (at least 70-75 years, by my guess), and since the quilt was very well worn, all the fabrics are washed out. No matter how I arrange them, they are still going to look washed out. Therefore, any designs that I might make with the half-square triangles are going to be very hard to distinguish from the muddled background squares. HOWEVER, this is not MY quilt. It seems almost sacriligeous to add too much to this quilt - I want to honor and celebrate the original quilter, not drown her out with my own ideas and preferences. New border fabric seems the least intrusive - basically a frame for the "old quilt". But somehow, I just don't think that is going to satisfy me. Oh, what to do...

Kid update - I was listening in on a conversation between the boys this morning. Apparently, there is a bully in the Pre-K classroom who not only pushes, scratches, kicks and throws dirt at Donald, but also calls him "Donald Duck". I knew that was coming, I just didn't realize that it would happen this young. Anyway, Jason, the big (6 year old) brother, was telling Donald that he needed to tell this bully that if he didn't leave him alone, he was going to have to deal with his big brother. Donald's eyes got round and he asked breathlessly, "What are you going to do to him? Are you going to GET HIM?" Jason said, "No, I am going to have a serious talk with him in a FIRM VOICE!" I nearly drove off the road, laughing! I've been telling him that he needs to be firm with our puppy to make him behave. Apparently, that works for bullies, too! (I'm just relieved that he wasn't planning to "get him!")

I sure do love my kids!

Three strikes - you're OUT!

I've been maintaining a quilting blog at www.myquiltblog.com for nearly 3 years now. I loved it there. It was easy to manage, it was a small, close community of bloggers with similar interests, and I made some great online friends that I hope to continue to know. But for the third time, the site has crashed and I have lost everything. I hate to be a rat, abandoning a sinking ship, but I started blogging to chronicle my quilting adventures, and I tire of starting over again and again. I know that I should backup my work somehow, perhaps even print it out, but I really thought that the blog host would be backing everything up. Oh well.

So, a fresh start - that can be fun! I've moved nearly 40 times in my nearly 38 years, and I like change. I am a restless sort, which is glaringly obvious when you follow my quilting pursuits - starts and stops, bursts of activity on one project, and then it languishes forgotten on a shelf for months while I work on my next "must-do". Somehow, there are many projects in the "must-do" category, but not many projects make it into the "must-finish" category.

Here's one that tops the "must-finish" pile, though. While visiting my mother on Mother's Day, she pulled out some quilts that had been her mother's, made by her grandmother. They're beyond well worn, falling to pieces with gaping holes that you can put your torso through. My mom is not a quilter (I was introduced to quilting by my mother-in-law; that's a story for another day), but she really wants to be able to display, if not use, these pieces of her family's history. Being the dutiful daughter and adventuresome quilter that I am, I volunteered to try to salvage one. Note that I have absolutely no experience with quilt restoration, and am, in truth, still a novice quilter myself. However, I can't resist a good challenge!
As soon as I brought this quilt home, thoughts of it pushed all the other quilts-in-progress aside and demanded attention. After mulling over my options, I decided that it would have to be taken apart and put back together again in order to be saved. And since so much of the fabric is no longer useable, new fabric will need to be added.

Taking apart the layers was a cinch - it had been tied, and I had the top separated from the batting and backing within a day. Then, I started taking apart the blocks themselves. At first, I thought I could just separate them into useable sections to put back together, but I soon realized that I would have to actually take it apart piece by piece. The original fabric squares were 2 3/4" each, but because of wear on the seams, most of them only have about 2 1/4" of useable fabric in them. So, I am now in the process of completely disassembling the top and cutting each square down to 2". The half-square triangles I am leaving intact and cutting down to 2" also. When I put it all back together, I think I am going to have fun with the layout, maybe adding a pinwheel here and a star there whereas before the layout seemed completely random.

When finished, I would also like to quilt it, rather than tie it, so that it will hold up better over time. It is an ambitious project, I know, but I'm feeling really energized by it. And since I work best with deadlines, let me just put this out there - wouldn't it be great if I could have this ready for my mother at Christmas? Even with the job, the kids, the house renovations, the cub scout den leader responsibilities, and the things that come up every day that cut into my quilting time, I think I can do this. And I think I can do this without sacrificing spending some time on my other quilting projects. Being able to post my progress will help keep me motivated. Let's see if Blogger is better to me that MyQuiltBlog.com.