pieces and parts

I've already shown you my favorite quilt pieces over the past few days, but there were more, so many more.

These are precut "thimbles". Their size is around 2 inches long. I'd say there are a few hundred of them. Not nearly enough for a quilt top, but a good start that I can add to over time. I'd guess that most of the fabrics in this pile(not all) date to the 50's and earlier.

Next up - about 75 butterfly shapes. These fabrics seem to be more of my childhood era - 60's to 70's. Also, there are some slight variations in the butterflies. From my first scan through them, I think there are two styles, though they're almost identical in size.

This one will keep me busy for years with hand piecing. Scallops? Clamshells? There have to be at least 500 of these (I also have the template she used). The fabrics look to be mostly from the 60's and 70's here too. Not pictured are an equal number of white pieces. I thought for a bit that I might eliminate the white pieces and just do all color fabrics, but then I saw some examples with white rows and I like them. I also feel somewhat honor-bound to finish the project as Shirley intended it. The ones that are pieced were done by her, but I think she abandoned the project after making some mistakes. I'll have to take those apart before moving ahead.

Petals, hundreds and hundreds of flower petals ready for applique. There are also a lot of black circle centers ready to go. I spent an afternoon sorting these babies out by fabric and color. Only a few of the fabrics are repeated more than 4 times in the shapes. My favorite is placed on top. I think I'll have to incorporate a snippit of it into something for a certain bird I know.

I have my work cut out for me, literally.

string quilt top

Here it is:

The final dimensions are about 4 feet by 5 feet. (I didn't think to measure it before we left on vacation and I'm writing this in a hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia - very far from my studio.)

I used some of the scraps that were in the box to repair a few corners that were missing or just too off to line up with the other blocks. Otherwise they were just sewn together like regular one patches. As easy as it is to line up basic rectangles, there were so many seams and layers in them that I broke a needle piecing them. I don't think I've ever broken a needle just sewing. (It's usually from something stupid like moving the needle position to the left or right, then putting on a straight stitch foot and forgetting the needle is off - insert swear word here.)

After doing a tiny bit of research at the library I think I'll use a piece of flannel instead of batting. Some string quilts never had batting in them at all because of all the seams. The backing will probably be muslin unless I have a piece of vintage fabric on hand that seems perfect for the job. It seems silly to put something pretty on the back of a quilt that will always hang on a wall though. I planned to follow the seam lines joining the blocks with a decorative feather stitch on my machine in black thread for the quilting. The thickness from all the piecing would make hand quilting extremely difficult. The binding will be black - of that, I'm sure. I may also put a thin sleeve on all the edges of the back so I can rotate it easily to lessen the stress on the fabrics from hanging. Most of the them are at least 60 years old. Norm feels a lot are older than that.

Do any of you have recommendations for an online source where I can research antique string quilts more? Or do you know of a good book?

The very best part of finishing the top - taking it back to Norm's house the day before we left for vacation (yes, they were running the sale ANOTHER weekend and yes, I bought a few more things). He was so happy to see it put together. I'll have to send him a picture when it's finally a quilt.

string quilt foundations

Perhaps this will be of interest to no one, but the foundations of the string quilt blocks were almost as interesting to me as the fronts. Norm said that they had cut up a Montgomery Wards catalog for most of the blocks, though I did find some that were pieced to newspapers.

I know two girls that would love the dog and cat for sale in the upper right block.

Had to take a photo of this one for my little Trixie - even though she spells her given name with an 'x', not 'ce'. Not so sure she'll ever be a "pre-eminent counselor on social decorum" either. Not as long as she keeps pulling her dress up over her head in public.

I would kill for one of these bikes.

Some of the paper was about to fall off like these. On most I had to rip it bit by bit. Removing the foundations took almost as long as putting the blocks together.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single date on any of the papers. Any guesses as to the year?

Tomorrow - the finished top.

garage sale - the sequel

As promised - goodies from the quilter's garage sale:

I have far too much to put in one post or to post only on Thrifty Thursdays, so I'll just put stuff up as I get around to taking pictures.

Jan accompanied me on this trek after tales of what I bought in the fall. We spent a fair amount of time there in the morning and came home with what I thought was a terrific bag of finds. Later in the day I got a call on my cell phone from Jan. She had returned in the afternoon to see what else had been added (the husband and daughter are continually putting more out as each day progresses). There was a large box of vintage piecework, she had bought some of it, but thought I might be interested in some and even better - there were more feedsacks. After begging her to go back and ask them to put those aside for me til I could return, I broke a landspeed record getting from my house to theirs.

The feedsacks were a no brainer (and I'll put pictures of them up another day). As I sorted through the box of piecework my head started spinning. There was so much and I didn't even know where to begin making decisions. The husband remembered me from the fall and he began telling me where they had bought various things, and which he knew Shirley had worked on herself. After a few minutes, he said I should make an offer on the whole box. We agreed on a price and it all came home with me.

I have a lot of quilt tops waiting to be put together.

6 pointed stars. 188 of them. (That's a plastic shoebox full.) Some are hand pieced, some are done partially by machine. All have a wonky quality about them - not too many seams line up in the center of the stars. I believe these were purchased by the late owner at an antique shop and were not done by her, but I need to check with her husband.

These are what made my heart sing. 192 pieced string quilt blocks. They're machine or hand sewn to a paper base. The size is about that of an index card. Norm told me he learned to iron on these blocks. As Shirley would sew, he pressed.

The fabrics thrill me. Each one averaged about 9 pieces.

Tomorrow, more on the string quilt blocks.

the kids

Meet snaggletooth (for some reason she doesn't care for this nickname):

The other front tooth fell out two days after this picture was taken. She now takes all meals through a straw.

Nearly had to tear her off of her teacher's arm the last day of school. For us, that was only last week.

Her breakout performance as The Paper Bag Princess in her classroom play.

Chris, myself and this crew are currently on our way to Washington D.C. for vacation.

No idea if I'll post while I'm gone, but boy do I have some finds to show you. Remember that quilter's garage sale from the fall? They had another one...

little log cabin in the big woods

Finished!

I posted this doll quilt top a few weeks back. I knew it wouldn't be up here soon after as a finished project since I planned to take another stab at hand quilting.

For the past few months I've been making the rounds at quilting - each week I'd pick a different woman to sit beside. Some days I tried to be casual and just looked over while she worked. Other days I was blatant and asked a barrage of questions. They all had individual favorite techniques, but all were alike in telling me that I shouldn't learn from them because they broke the rules. That's when it hit me that I could simply pick the rules that worked for me and do what felt right. It's amazing what a little direction from experienced quilters will teach you. Not only did this go round work better and faster, but I actually enjoyed it.

I chose to quilt close to the ditch to hide what were likely to be less than perfect stitches. The back shows the pattern I quilted a little better. I also noticed that hand quilting wrinkles up a lot more in the wash than machine quilting. I love that wrinkly look, but I love my machine too.

I'll still use my machine for anything larger than a crib quilt (at least at this point in my life), but I think there might be a few more hand quilted, doll quilts down the line.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting for a weekend power outage followed by the death of our modem . (Hope to be back sometime tomorrow.)