Vintage Re-done

As a result of having some extra time on my (Kara) hands thanks to the lockdowns, I decided I would make all three of our children quilts. I had intentions of doing that for them about 20 years ago, but only succeeded in making one child her own quilt (you can read about that HERE). The first two quilts had been finished and quilted and so I had one left to make. A long time ago, I purchased an old quilt top in a thrift store and I had yet to do anything with it. The top was probably from the 60's and was a color-filled amalgamation of scraps, with no apparent rhyme or reason as to the color placement. That didn't matter to our oldest as she has a love for all things vintage and this quilt top spoke to her.

Before I knew better, I washed the quilt top when I brought it home—big mistake. Some of the fabrics were not typical quilting cottons and a few of them frayed through the seams. When I decided to re-make this for my daughter, I knew that surgery would be involved and that not all the blocks would make it. What started out as a 30 block quilt, would have to be reduced to 20. In order to neaten things up a bit, I knew I would have to trim the blocks to a uniform size. The downside to that is that I would lose the points on the center square, but I just told myself that it would become a "snowball".

The aftermath of un-sewing

The trimmed blocks that made the cut.

The next decision to be made was what to do with the sashing. My hands had gotten sore from all the un-stitching, so taking apart all the cornerstones was not going to happen. Since the sashing had to be trimmed to the new block size, I didn't hesitate to cut out the cornerstones, but this meant I had to replace it with something. I remembered that I had a box of gingham that I received from my Grandma before she passed. Kaitlin, our daughter, was fortunate to know and love her Great-Grandma, so using this fabric added a special twist to this re-make.

The gingham cornerstones

I dug into the box of gingham again for the backing and there was a green and white piece that my grandmother had already sewn into a backing, so it was pretty apparent that it was meant to be the backing for this quilt. My long-arm friend Lisa and I decided on a great all-over leaf pattern for the quilt, and Lisa did a fantastic job completing the journey of this crazy, vintage quilt top!

This hot pink!

Gotta love a good paisley!

One of my favorite fabrics.

What was a discarded item, ended up being transformed into a unique beauty full of special details that will speak to the new owner. I don't know anything about the original maker, but I hope she would love to see what became of her quilt top.