Vintage fabrics, pigs ears, and other things

Last weekend was my local quilt guild's Quilt Show - my guild being the Pajaro Valley Quilt Association in Santa Cruz County, California. I'll just say right off, it was another great show, featuring our many, many talented members and their fabulous quilts. I won't talk too much about the quilts as I have no pictures to post. I took a few with my iphone 5 which is barely limping along these days, and among other deficits, can no longer send photos. And I didn't want to lug my ipad around the show. Anyway...

I spent an inordinate amount of time at the Bargain Garden (aka flea market), digging around for buried treasures. The first thing I look for is anything "vintage" so no surprise that I honed in immediately on the above blob of interesting looking stuff.

 Yes, its a vintage top!

Sort of ugly and lots of stitching crimes, but....

 you can see there are some pretty cool old fabrics here

 including a lot of great shirtings

 and all in pretty good shape.

Being a Log Cabin, there are no big pieces, but the strips finish at 2" so still have lots of possibilities. I am already in the process of deconstructing the blocks and thinking of ideas - lots of ideas - of what to make with them. As you've probably guessed, I'll be making them into doll quilts of various sizes and designs.

And that was just the beginning! Multiple days of digging yielded all kinds of yummy stuff.

  I got off with quite a haul, including several large backing-type pieces (not shown) and I stayed just under my allotted budget. I am going to have so much fun with this!

Meanwhile, you may remember this picture of my design wall a while back, all goodies gleaned from some vintage blocks my MIL gave me, some having already become little quilts.

I decided I wanted to work with that little block on the bottom next.

Here's a closer look, and you can see it has serious issues. It was cut to within an inch of its life for one thing, meaning most seam allowances disappeared. And look at the way-too-tiny blue triangle on the upper right. Plus, its significantly stained. I probably should have rejected it as unworkable, but I thought it was so darn cute and wanted to give it a try. 

I decided I could replace both the blue corners with some shirting fabric that's very similar to the dot fabric in the block (you can see it poking out from behind the block) and work around or accept the other issues.  

I did a simple frame with fabrics from my "vintage" stash, which I think worked well together.

Sewing the little black border around the block without cutting off its points required good dose of spray starch, some hand stitching and a bit of magical thinking. It held up through washing and drying, so that's a good sign!

It washed up a LOT cleaner, too.

 

I "Hand quilted" it by machine, my usual MO these days.

This was sort of like trying to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear, but I like how it turned out, especially after washing and drying it, giving it the crinkled effect. I just love how it feels!

And that, my dear friends, is my Monthly Mini for February!

I might not be able to do an official link-up at the end of the month due to not having access to my desktop for a couple of weeks, but I'll try to do it from my ipad. At any rate, just go over to Wendy's blog on March 1 and you should be able to see all the other Montly Mini's.

love,
Sandy