Throwback Thursday; Vintage Apron

My friend, Donna bought this vintage apron for me at a local thrift shop. I was amazed at the detailed, hand done cross stitch on the gingham. Somebody had put a lot of work into this, it's in perfect condition, maybe it never was used. It even has stitching on the pocket and waistband. A real treasure, indeed!

Some Unstitching Required

I've been quilting the wildlife quilt that was shown in the previous post. Tonight I was free motion quilting away until the thread broke, I thought that would be enough sewing for tonight. I laid the quilt out on the floor to see how the quilting looked, then I saw this- a scrap had clung on and was run over a few times with stitching. Will be using the seam ripper tomorrow!

Wildlife Quilt Top Sewn Together

I just finished sewing the borders on this quilt top. I have to have the quilt completed by June, then it'll be given away for a gift. I bought the wildlife picture panels in Whitehorse, Yukon last summer. When I got home, I tried to figure out how to put them together into a quilt. I thought of alternating them with a pieced block, so I chose a Sawtooth Star at first, then I added black sashing to the pictures to make them the same size as the blocks. I was short one block because the repeat only had 8 pictures, which I had two sets. I took one picture out and added two bear prints of another fabric. I started running low on some of the fabrics used in the star blocks, so I switched to Nine Patches that had a couple of other fabrics in them. When the blocks were sewn together in a 5X7 configuration, the whole thing looked too long and skinny. To solve that problem, I added two side borders of hiking boot fabric. The outside border is a brown and black print. Now to get busy and quilt it, I'll try to choose a simple design so it doesn't take too long to do.

Throwback Thursday; 1992 Black and White Challenge

In 1992, Our quilting guild put on a challenge to make a quilt or quilted item using only black and white fabrics. That's me, standing by the Snail's Trail quilt that I made. One person made a jacket, which was really nice. The piano keys with the hands turned out really cute and the sheep one was a fun idea. Lynda Balas won the Viewers' Choice with her wonderful square wall quilt. The challenge was fun and started me on a journey of collecting black and white fabrics, which I still do to this day.

Throwback Thursday; Wheel of Mystery

I made this hand pieced and hand quilted quilt in 1992. There is a picture of it in one of the 2010 posts, but it doesn't show all of it. At our local quilt show in '92, it won the Canadian Quilters Association ribbon for Viewer's Choice. I used to hand quilt all the time, I like the look of it, but it's so time consuming. I'm slow at machine quilting too!

Throwback Thursday; Back of Y2K Quilt

This is the back of the Y2K quilt that I made. I used leftover 2 1/2 inch squares from the fabric swaps and the signature squares that we traded. I also used what 2000 themed fabrics that were in my stash. To make the backing big enough for the quilt, I bordered it with muslin. After it was washed, there were a few colour bleeds onto the muslin and some of the signature squares have blurry ink, some have almost faded away. I used wool batting, which might not have been the best choice for this, it shrank a bit, I didn't want that look because I wanted the writing on the signature squares to be flat and not crinkly. Oh well, live and learn. I enjoyed trading fabric squares with people from all over the world and it was fun to make the quilt.

Comfort Quilt Finished- Yay!

I finally got the binding and the label sewn on this quilt, I can give it to our guild at the next meeting. I used some odds and ends of fabric for the back of the quilt, it's a good way to use up some random pieces. When I went to look for some fabric for binding, I found a piece of the dark red print that's already in the quilt. This is quite amazing, considering that the quilt top was a UFO from the late 90s, I didn't know I still had fabric leftovers from that.

. The pattern for the quilt was a mystery project we had with our guild. It's so long ago that I don't remember who designed it, I no longer have the pattern here. If anybody knows, please tell me, then I can give proper credit to the designer, thanks!

Throwback Thursday; Y2K Quilt

In 1999, quilters from all over the world were trading 2 1/2 inch squares of fabric to make Y2K quilts. The goal was to have 2000 different fabrics, no two the same, to celebrate the year 2000. Many internet groups were formed to swap fabric squares. We included a muslin signature square in each trade. It was quite the job to sort out the colours and make sure there were no duplicates. We traded 20 or 25 squares per envelope with dozens of people. For each envelope I sent, I got one in return, most were all good fabrics, accurately cut. I only got one batch of fabric that looked like sheer curtain material that was unusable. I arranged the squares so there is a blue crescent moon in the centre to represent "once in a blue moon". I didn't get my quilt done until 2002, but that's because I'm slow. :) I'll send a picture of the back of the quilt next week, it has all the extra squares and signatures on it.