One Tin Box

 There was an estate sale near our house yesterday. I found this tin and was curious about who had made it. It is marked "Made in Belgium" so I assumed it might be a chocolate box.

 I found out that it was made by a company named Daher in England which is now The Tin Box Company in NY. Love this tin and you will see in my next post that it is an ironic find.

 In a small box at the same estate sale I found a bunch of quilt squares. SCORE!! I am loving the fabric. A real mix of mostly older cotton with graphic or floral prints. I've tucked it into my new tin box for now.

Here is some "cheater" fabric made to look like quilt squares probably from the 1970's cause it looks like Holly Hobbie style prints and colorways. :-)

Maypole Quilt

I apologize for the rather sad photo that I took of this quilt.

It was museum lit which means you basically can't see the quilt very well at all.

There was a postage stamp quilt near this one all in feedsack fabrics,

with lighting so awful that I didn't even try to capture a photo of it.

In this quilt I love the children dancing around the maypole

and the inward scallops around the edges.

40"s Doll Quilt

A pretty doll quilt that I found on an Etsy shop HERE. 

I love the hand piecing--all hand stitched and slightly wonky. 

The edging has a lovely rosey pattern.

Quilts

Snail's Trails is one of my very favorite patchwork patterns.

It was on view at a quilt show that I had a chance to go to on Friday.

I shared the day with Mom and Meg and we exhausted ourselves with fun. :-) 

This vintage r/w/b quilt was in a vendor's booth.

Isn't it lovely? 

All those curves......

A different vendor was upset that I was taking pictures of his gorgeous booth

(there wasn't a "no photos" sign at his booth),

but I promised not to share the photos anywhere. I wish I could.... 

Anyway, the gorgeous booth was filled with buttons, ribbons and sewing ephemera all arranged by color.

So there was a blue area, a red area, purple, etc.--it was so very pretty.

So many pretty colors!

Sample Squares

Last summer, I visited a quilt shop in Michigan. As we checked out the sisters who ran the shop gave me a wee pile of sample quilt squares from the Bar Harbor fabric line by Moda.

I have made a decorative quilted square after adding a few little squares from my own stash.

I plan to use the square at the center of my dining table and/or on the wall.

Quilting complete

A couple of pics showing the stitching up close.

One of my favorites--the red dotted square.

And finally the backing fabric, a red mini flower.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

A trip to the AQS quilt show in Ohio is how I spent Saturday.

We viewed about 400 quilts, yikes,

might have missed a few, jabbered and shopped.....great fun.

Smaller and Smaller

Well, my last quilt was pretty small, it's dimensions, roughly 17 x 20 inches, with blocks 1 1/4 x 2 1/2 and 1 3/4 x 4 1/2. This time I went even smaller and I love this size. It is a bitty doll quilt, only 12 x 14 inches, with all blocks 2 inches square. I told you I had been fooling around with the Hello Betty collection by Moda from last summer or thereabouts. As soon as my sewing machine came back one of the things I whipped up was this small project. I wanted something portable and it was elegantly so. I stuffed it into my purse with a bit of thread and needle and off I went. One good tip I read somewhere was to use the small cutter on a box of dental floss instead of scissors when those aren't allowed. We just got back from a trip and the dental floss thing worked great! I reverted to scissors when I could but the floss was a real saver.

Doll Quilt

Well I have finally finished the quilt I started all the way back in the fall.

I stitched together some squares of Hello Betty by Moda yesterday to make a small quilt--even smaller than this one. I bound it before quilting since it was so small and I finally tried the double-fold binding method with mitered corners. Yikes, it was a little fussy but it worked. It is small enough to tuck into a purse and not make me hot when I quilt it.

I switched to a new editor in blogger which allows more freedom with pictures and has this text centered--weird and I don't know what it will look like yet......

Have a great weekend!

Doll Quilt

Autumny doll quilt top done......now to the binding and backing. These are the parts that I dread the most. Loving the nesting dolls still! :-)

Jellyroll Love

Moda's Hello Betty collection. I love the dots and can hardly wait to use the fabric. I have never gotten a jellyroll of fabric strips before and am not sure how to use them. I think I will look around the blogs for all the great idea's.

Babushka Sisters

My matryoshka wallhanging quilt is done! And it only took me a year....... ;-)
I am planning to attach the "story" of the quilt, what I was thinking of when I made it to the back of the quilt, after I write it down on a piece of cloth with permanent ink.
I wish more quilts had this "backstory". Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear what the quilter thought about her quilt. Are the fabrics scraps from another project, maybe children's clothes, or other work? Was it made for a special purpose, or person?

I just went through some of my grandmother's memorabilia the other day. In a description of her wedding for the newspaper it mentioned an heirloom bridal veil. I have never heard of this veil, let alone seen it. I wish I had asked about the old lace-covered clothing and scrap bag fabrics that were passed down from my grandmother.

One little blue silk dress has a note pinned to the bottom. The note, handwritten by my great-grandmother, says the dress belonged to my grandmother when she was a girl. Sentimental old me just loves this kind of stuff. :-)

The original idea for this quilt came from my love of the matryoshka, babushka form and a storybook of Em's "The Littlest Matryoshka" about matryoshka sisters. I have two sisters, so it seemed natural to work with three dolls, all lined up.

Some of the fabrics are from my "old" scrap bag. The large polka dot fabric used for the "shelf" that the dolls sit on, is from some fabric toadstool seats that I made for my older daughter out of milk crates and plywood when she was 2. The tan fabric of the sister's faces scraps from a stuffed rabbit.

So, here are the sisters, similar to each other in lots of ways, yet each with their own pattern, their own tilt of the head, their own smile.

Criss/Cross Chicken Scratch

Not much in the way of chicken scratch embroidering but I like just a little around the border of my little quilt project. I like the name "chicken scratch" too. I've always thought that I wanted chickens as well, running around my yard, but for the book "Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea" by Catherine Goldhammer. In the book, the author describes, nights of keeping the chickens from freezing and other chicken requirements that convinced me that I'm not a potential poultry farmer. :-) Good book though, about making do with less. I'd like to read it again, come to think of it but I can't seem to find my copy in the house...hmmmm, could be time for a bookshelf go-over/clearing out.

Three Sisters Quilt

I started working on this small quilt sometime last year. I have pulled it out to work on in the evenings and some of the quiet mornings that I have been enjoying lately. I had a heck of a time finding the red/white gingham that I wanted in a border. I had not noticed that gingham is now mostly polyester-ick, printed on one side of the fabric instead of woven and all the various sizes are not available. I say we bring back all-cotton woven gingham in lots of colors and while we are at it we can bring back dotted swiss (as seen in the apron above). :-) By the way, I am extremely happy with all the other fabric with dots that is available now--stocking up for when it is no longer in vogue.
Take Care.