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.

Quaran"stitching" and other Stay at Home Activities

No matter where we are in the world, "Stay at Home" has become the new normal. Six months ago, we had no idea that this pandemic would change our lives so dramatically. Many of us are making the best of it, with activities that we might not have had time for before. Teri and I (Kara) thought we would share some of the things we are doing to stay at home and out of trouble.

My quilt guild, The Black Forest Quilters, began a mystery quilt a few months ago. I decided that I would take a break from hand-stitching and make friends with my machine again. I was a few clues behind, but was determined to finish. Mystery quilts are a little bit of a risk when you begin, because it is a lot of work for something you may not like but I trusted the organizer to pick a good pattern. I was very happy with the quilt, and it used up a lot of brights that I had languishing in my stash. Mysteries can be fun!

Charm Shuffle, by Gudrun Erla
Stripology Mixology

The finished quilt top

After vacationing at my machine, it was time to get to work on some upcoming deadlines. One of those deadlines was to get started on a new set of blocks for our Village Wanderings Series. 

Picking ribbon colors

It's always fun to create, and these blocks were no exception. I even decided to play around with some miniature elements for a few of them.

Prepped to be stitched down.

Ready to be appliquéd.

Another miniature for one of the blocks.

While we are working on new projects, we are continuing to make progress on our Woodland Reverie quilt. Teri and I each pick a block, finish it, and then the other person makes that block in her colorway. It is fun to see how the same block looks different with another background and appliqué palette.

My version

Teri's version

When I made it home from the US about three weeks ago, I had no idea that things would escalate as quickly as they did. I went to the grocery store, stocked up on some things, and began stitching. Who knew that my next stitching project would be masks to wear in public places here in Germany.

When this is over maybe these will work as a bikini top!

The first ones cut out and ready to stitch.

The internet is full of wonderful free patterns right now, and I found this one and fell in love with it. It is called Plaid-ish, by Kitchen Table Quilting. I have been wanting to organize and use my scraps, and this seemed like a good project to motivate me to do so.

Yikes!

Organized by color and value. Next step is to trim them into manageable pieces.

This quilt takes a lot of time to cut, but the sewing is simple.

That has been the stitching done over here on this side of the pond, but as much as I would like to stitch all day, other things must be done–like grocery shopping. My wonderful husband did most of the shopping while I was quarantined. I gave him a list but was not as specific as I should have been, so when I wrote "smoked sausage", this is what came home:

We  are now well-stocked with smoked sausage.
It was a great choice because the sausage is quite tasty!

My wonderful daughter-in-law inspired me to try my hand at sourdough bread. I have never been successful at creating a perfect loaf, so that was my quest. Two days after starting, I achieved sourdough nirvana (slight over-exaggeration).

It's not perfect, but I'll take it.

That has been what has going on over here. Teri will share her "quaranstitching" adventures with you next week. In the meantime, we are working on a special mystery project that we will be offering to you all in the coming weeks. 

Stay healthy, stay home, and stay stitching!

A Tardy Tutorial

Better late than never is not our normal life mantra, but sometimes that's just the way life is—especially when it comes to blog posts! Thankfully, there are no blog police out there and we can just roll with what the week brings and deliver a blog post a day (or two) later than we normally do.

We are working feverishly on quite a few projects for next year and as we do, we try to be diligent about taking pictures for our handouts. When we teach a class, we feel it is important to give our students all the information they might need to finish the project once they leave the class, thus all the pictures need to be taken for our handouts. This tutorial shows how I (Kara) have made the split leaves for one of our class projects. 

Split Leaf Tutorial

For this method I used a full leaf template, the convex side of a half leaf template and two different green fabrics. 

Step 1

Place the convex side of your leaf template on your first fabric.

Step 2

Trace the center vein line starting at the top making sure to trace the top and bottom curve of the leaf to help your placement later.

Step 3

Finger press along drawn line.

Step 4

Place on second green and pin.

Step 5

Appliqué the turned-under line between top and bottom marks. Turn over and trim the excess second fabric to 1/8 of an inch.

Step 6

Center full leaf template over appliquéd seam line and trace around with a marking pencil of your choice. I use a white uniball Signo rollerball pen which you can find HERE.

It helps if your leaf template has a drawn
center vein line, but I just eyeballed this leaf.

Drawn leaf

Step 7

Trim leaf leaving a generous 1/8".

Back side of leaf

Step 8

Place on background and pin or baste in place.

Step 9

Needle turn edges under!

There are a lot of ways to do split leaves for appliqué, but this method has worked well for me. As with many components of appliqué, it's always good to try multiple methods and find the one that works best for you. Hopefully, you will give this split leaf method a try.

In the not too distant future, we will be able to share the projects that we are working on in full. It's keeping us pretty busy, and Teri is also getting ready for an exciting, cross-country road trip. You can bet that her travels will include some fun quilty stops! 

Thanks for bearing with our tardiness in posting!

The Crazy Quilt Wrap-Up

A journey we started six months ago came to an end last Saturday. We had the last class in our Crazy Quilt: Start to Finish series, and it did not disappoint. You can read about our students' progress over the last six months through the following links:

Crazy Quilting—Start to Finish
Crazy Quilting—Start to Finish; Session One: Constructing the Blocks
Crazy Quilts, Session 2: Marking and Stitching Motifs
Crazy Quilts, Session 3: Ribbon Fun
Crazy Quilts, Sessions 4 and 5: Progress

Every student had a different take on what they wanted their project to look like. Whether it was the fabric choices, colors, or motifs, all of the projects displayed the unique stamp and personality of their creators.

Joanne displaying her progress

Inspiration taken from Joanne's love of birds

Linda sharing her inspiration

Each of these blocks had a theme

The stitcher's birthplace

This is a block all about the creator; her love of cats, hats, and roses

What sweet ribbon roses made by Theresa, an avid gardener and flower arranger

Some of our ladies chose to stick with four blocks, while others had more ambitious plans—and one is preparing to do 42 blocks for a large crazy quilt!

Denise chose these lovely earth tones 
and is considering framing her four blocks

Betsy has nine wonderful blocks made with her stash

Laurel has already put together 12 of her 42 blocks and chose
black centers to be the common thread in each block.

Our Wednesday students completed their four block projects and definitely fulfilled the "start to finish" aspect of our class.

Norma's completed project contains some of her beautiful hardanger work.

Rebecca's gorgeous fairy tale crazy quilt, complete with border and binding

A beautiful variegated ribbon flower in the border

As one final lesson, we did a combination stitch, round-robin activity in class. A 7x5" piece of flannel-backed linen with two drawn lines was given to all, and we each had to stitch a "seam" stitch.

Our round-robin pieces

Then we passed our fabric to the next person and they put another stitch down to combine with the first one. We passed it two more times so that each piece had been stitched by four different hands. The goal of the activity was to help our students with the combination-stitch thought process. Folded in half, these would make simple needle book covers if left as is, or they could be embellished a bit with more combination stitches or even a few small motifs. 

A good practice for all the stitches learned

We have had an amazing journey with our students and have loved getting to know them and helping them bring out their crazy quilt creative side. Both Teri and I have been thrilled to share our love of crazy quilting and embroidery, not just with our students in class, but with you, our readers, as well.