A Bluestocking Knits

I got my sewing machine back from its week-long sojourn in the repair shop yesterday afternoon, and, on their advice, spent some time sewing this morning to make sure that I’m happy with the repair. It no longer shrieks like a banshee, and — bonus! — the action feels smoother than it has in a long time. Yes, I’m happy!

These are the quilt blocks I put together. I saw a scrap quilt in the Old Swedish Quilts book a few years ago that appealed to me enormously as something both handsome and useful, as well as thrifty, using up scraps left over from other sewing projects. It is simply a string-pieced block, using a square of old fabric — here, cut from a set of worn-out table napkins — with strips of various widths sewn onto it. No piecing required! so it really takes longer to choose the strips than it does to sew up and press the block. With today’s batch, I have about forty blocks, so some ways to go still before I can put together a quilt top ….

It pleased me very much to add in one of the hand-pieced and probably-antique scraps in my box of Betty’s things —