A Bluestocking Knits

These seven strips of blocks were in the quilting stuff I bought at the estate sale last Saturday, longish strips with six or eight blocks (small or large respectively), “on point” and edged with half-squares.  I was impressed with the piecing, and even more so later when I realized that they are all hand-sewn.

Most of the folks I talk with on a regular basis about miniature needlepoint always laugh at themselves that the first thing they do when looking at petitpoint — theirs or someone else’s! — is turn it over and look at the back.  There is probably a slight touch of the competitive kind of curiosity about it — as in “whose backs are neater, mine or theirs?” — but most of the time that really is only slight, and instead it’s more of a curiosity about what stitches did they use (“did she use basket stitch for the background? should I try that next time?”), etc — like a car lover checking the engine, it’s just something you do!  You don’t very often get the chance to see the underside of quilts, though, of course, since most of the time once it’s out in public, as it were, it’s already bound and quilted and therefore impossible to do!  Even quilting bloggers rarely if ever show this — I don’t think I’ve ever seen it — and so I will take up a rather long post now to show some details of the backs of these lovely and carefully-stitched blocks.  (And I’ve left those photos bigger than usual so that you can see up close if you like!)

I am assuming that this is Betty’s work, since it is clearly not antique and probably not particularly “vintage” — there were some large scraps of the two background fabrics folded up along with the strips, and the brown one still has “Marcus Brothers” on the selvage. 

It took me a few moments to realize what it was, but one of the things that struck me the most about these is how very little fraying there is!  That certainly goes a long way to explaining the air of tidiness about the backs of these blocks.  The fact that there are few loose thread ends also contributes.

You can see the traces of pen lines, on both the pieces and the border triangles, that Betty marked as sewing lines.  This here looks at first like machine-stitching, but the thread she used is cream-colored, and the pen line disguises that.  (She used running stitch, by the way, not back-stitch.)

I was particularly interested in the stars, having just completed a dozen of a similar size, and not been terribly impressed with my results.  Here is one of mine, it all of its shabbiness —

It’s easy to see here what I mean about the fraying! There is essentially none on Betty’s.  It’s possible, looking at the one below, that she cleaned it up, either as she went or while pressing it, as you can see where the fraying would have been, but still — gosh!

Sometimes she marked on the back of the fabric the center of a motif that she wanted to “fussy-cut” — she didn’t on the center square of the above block, but did on at least three of the four light brown prints, presumably with a window template —

She was careful, certainly, but not obsessive about pressing particular seams in a particular direction on the same kind of block — sometimes it’s towards the lighter of the two fabrics, sometimes it isn’t —

The "Brick Road" mini quilt kit (from Temecula Quilt Company) was part of the "Monthly Minis" subscription from 2016.  There are a couple of wobbles if you look closely, but I'm pleased with my piecing on this one!  I made my first cutting mistake here, unfortunately for me on one of the few kits that had little extra fabric, and so I would have had to piece a strip, but I decided to use a little bit of the border/binding fabric instead, since I'm not going to bind these individually.

"Bathwick," using prints from Karen Styles's "Bathwick" collection, these from 2018 so not too long ago.  I chose this kit partly because it's pretty but partly because I have a half-yard or so of that fussy-cut print in my half-square triangles quilt that I'm this close to finishing, which amused me greatly!  The kit came with that particular piece larger than the rest, so that it could be fussy-cut, a nice touch.  I made a slight cutting mistake — well, not really a mistake, but I changed my mind literally as the rotary cutter was whisking across the fabric, that instead I should just make the border strips as wide as the fabric allowed, instead of trimming them to 2" — and so one of them is a smidge narrower than the others!

The "Little Stars" kit was immediately my favorite, but I also knew that it would be the most fiddly, with those star points, and so I left it for last.  It is also, unfortunately, the one at which I was least successful — the stars are sometimes more "wonky" than they should be, and as you can probably see, some of the blocks were not especially amenable to lining up with the ones next to them.  As much as I've taken to heart the maxim, "People will never know how long it took you, but they will see how well you did it!" I wanted to pick out as few as possible of any wobbly seams because the pieces are so small — I was afraid they would stretch or fray so badly that nothing would go right — though I did pick out the howlers on this one.  Well, it's a learning experience, and yesterday evening I spent a rewarding hour gathering tips for more-accurate piecing which I will use in future!

I was pleased, though, with my figuring out how to get the strongly-directional fabric of that pale-pink star to have the lines all radiating outwards, instead of some outwards and some across (like the less-obviously-directional fabric of the star in the upper left corner), which is what happens when you cut the triangles from squares in which the lines all run in the same direction.

This is, by the way, apparently the "traditional" way of assembling a sawtooth star block, cutting out each piece individually.  There are two other methods that I know of now, which are a bit less risky where that unsupported bias edge is concerned, for one — but I thought I should try it this way, to see for myself.  Personally, I don't think I will cut individual pieces this way again, unless I'm doing English piecing! certainly not on pieces this small!

Here is something like my idea for putting these six pieces together, here laid out on my "Medallion Variations" quilt which is about the size I'd like this one to be — blue though, navy blue perhaps, instead of purple!  I have enough scraps to piece together a good-sized frame or border for the sides at least, with luck for the whole thing —

(This Wednesday, anyway!)

I sewed up the second of the six miniature-quilt kits this morning, and being the top-only, of course, it went together so quickly that I thought, "Well, goodness, I might as well do another!"  Above is the "Sweetheart" one.

This one doesn't have a name, so it's just "February 2017" — I sewed it up yesterday afternoon.  I need to work on keeping seams parallel — I guess I have a beginner's tendency to look at the edge of the fabrics while I'm sewing quilt pieces, when I should be looking at the previous seam in relation to the new one!

I decided to place the four-patch blocks randomly instead of following the picture — the down-side of randomness is that you can end up with two matching blocks directly opposite each other.  I couldn't face picking it out, by the time I noticed — oh, well.

This one I suspected the moment I saw it that while I like the pattern itself I wasn't wild about all of that orange — my least-favorite color, I think — and so since I had a bit of a coordinating Kona blue on hand, I decided to switch out the long "cheddar" strips.  Because of that, I rather slavishly followed the placement of the 1-inch blocks according to the photo!  This one is called "Autumn 1863."

The kits, by the way — from Temecula Quilt Co. — are excellent, with brief-but-clear instructions and more than enough fabric, even if I had cut the bindings.  There will be a decent amount of scraps for a border to go around all six, I think.

I also finished up an electric-heating-pad cover for Laura, who is about to dip her toes into the world of living on her own, heading off to university next month and a student apartment to be shared with a friend she knew in high school.  The cover is to a tutorial by Julie Stocker of Pink Doxies, and went together quite easily, although because I decided to make French seams on the inside (not having a serger or an effective serger-like stitch on my machine), it is certainly snug.  I'm very pleased with the fabrics, though — I was looking for something "Japanese" but decided on this instead, a bundle of fat quarters from the "Elements" collection by Dashwood Studio.  I didn't use any batting in this, by the way, rationalizing that that is only for looks, really.

(It was good to be pleased with this, as I've just spent the last few weeks sewing up hourglass blocks and ended up deeply ambivalent about the results, which I have rolled up and shoved under the piano while I go through a sort of stages-of-grief period.  This is also quite possibly why I am now binging on the mini quilt kits!)

It was almost a shame to cut this one into pieces — it reminds me of starlings —

Now I am going to sit for a while and work on this! —

David ambled into the bedroom this morning after breakfast, where I was sitting with my cup of tea and reading, and he asked if I was interested in going to an estate sale.  "She was a hoarder, apparently, and there's some quilting stuff."  So we went, not expecting much — "quilting stuff" often means just "cheap fabric" when you're at an estate sale — and indeed, the "hoarder" appellation was easy to understand when I saw literally a half-dozen rows of plastic and cardboard boxes laid out in the driveway alone, stretching on up into the garage, spilling over onto the plants along each edge, the boxes crammed with plastic bags full of fabrics, magazines, books, in addition to the usual Christmas ornaments, commemorative plates, tchotchkes, board games, DVDs.  Stunned, I made my way up between two of the rows of boxes, and about halfway along began idly poking through one of the boxes of fabric.  One of the first things I came upon was this crazy-rails quilt top, hand-stitched, clearly vintage if not antique.  Holy mackerel.

(I didn't unfold it until I got home.  It is full-size.  The beautiful red "rails" going upwards on the diagonal have faded considerably in the middle, but it is clearly the same fabric.  I had already noticed that some of the individual rails are pieced, but it wasn't until I got a closer look that I realized how very many of them are, some pieced in just a tiny corner — you can see in the photo below the large-ish piecing of the middle rail, but the dark one on the right has about a quarter-inch strip pieced into the upper-right corner as well.  Amazing.  The unknown maker didn't attempt to match the pieces, but she was very careful about cutting stripes and plaids straight, with the occasional surprise of a piece of seersucker or a bias-cut strip.)

And blocks — bags of blocks, some with just a few, like the two very handsome stars above, or with dozens — nine-patches, four-patches, four-patches-within-nine-patches …

Some of the blocks have been cut apart from each other or from a top, as there are traces of the neighboring fabric still attached to the edges.

Her taste was not much for the 1930s' bright colors, it seems, but for the "Civil War" browns and greys like these, practical pioneer colors that don't show the dirt but still long now and then for something pretty and floral.

And here and there for something exotic.  Scraps — but large ones — of Japanese fabric.  Very boro.

I saw this striped fabric folded up in a plastic bag and thought it was another scrap, but one that would make a perfect apron for a Scandinavian doll costume.  When I unfolded it at home, I discovered that it is in fact a full Japanese furoshiki, or wrapping cloth.  I suspect from the direction of the wrinkles that, in fact, it has been used for that very thing.  I hesitate cutting it up now, especially as I use furoshiki often for wrapping gifts, but it does have a number of tiny holes in it …

A substantial stack of indigo-blue cotton pieces, complete with paper templates.  I haven't figured out what block or blocks these were meant to become, as I haven't worked myself up to removing the pin yet, that is holding the paper shapes together.  Diamonds, obviously, some large triangles, and at least one rectangle.  Blue-and-white heaven.  Is is really 1870-something??

David said in my ear, "You should go into the house, there's more stuff in there," adding, bless him, "here's another bag."  He must have seen the look on my face.  It was becoming clear to me that the lady was not a hoarder in the psychological-disorder definition, hanging on to things because they're there, essentially, but that she amassed things because they were beautiful or fascinating, or because it's just so very easy to acquire kits faster than one can stitch them.  She must have sewed a lot of things herself, but she also collected antique quilts and blocks, as a number of the zip bags had prices on them.  There was a box entirely full of miniature-quilt kits from Temecula Quilt Co. (addressed to Betty, so now I knew her name, already thinking of her as something of a kindred spirit), a subscription that she had taken five or six years ago and then presumably not had time, or perhaps the energy, to make up.  I chose six of them, the ones I thought most likely that I would want to make — I don't know that I would have much use for miniature quilts, but who knows? maybe they could make a big "sampler" quilt.  Each kit comes with a photo of what the finished piece will look like — I love the stars one —

There were piles of books everywhere, higgledy-piggledy, falling over, stuffed into boxes of fabric, that made my librarian's heart wrench.  New books, most of them!  Betty obviously had a deep interest in antique quilts, including a sideline specifically of the Oregon Trail and its pioneers' quilts — I put one of those in my bag — but she was also curious about lace and other needlework.  The Korean one was a long-shot, in case Laura's interest in Korean culture extended to art and design, but the others are obviously some of my interests.  It got to the point where I was gently sliding them into my bag with a kind of gobsmacked astonishment — "Elizabethan treasures" from Hardwick Hall! Tasha Tudor's Dollhouse!  Old Swedish Quilts!

Diamonds, ready to piece into English-style patchwork.  Not long ago, browsing through my copy of The Quilts of Lucy Boston (as one does), I suddenly fell in love with her quilt now called "Kate's Stars," six diamonds placed together to form a star —

I've often had the feeling, at an estate sale, of poignancy at the thought of someone's things being sold off after her death, and yet at the same time a sense of wonder and luck at finding them myself, and this was just like that.  I think I would have liked Betty, and admired her taste and the wideness of her interests in the field of textiles and the history thereof (and understood her compulsion to collect!).  I certainly am grateful that I've come to know her, another of the makers before me, if only just a little and through some of the things that fascinated her.