Monday 17th June 2013

I’m still trying to sort out my boxes before putting them in to my sewing room,  as I pack a box of goodies I’m writing a list of things that go in to the box and then glue this on the outside of the boxes and hopefully this will save me many frustrating hours now when looking for some thing??????  I keep coming across lovely WIP’s I’d forgotten about !!!!! Many of you will know what I mean?????  Like these lovely vintage blocks

There are 44 blocks but two of them are made many years later and do not belong to the set. None of the blocks are square!!!!! I'm guessing I'm going to have to really put my thinking cap on to join them all again. May be wet them and set each one in to a square shape while wet then iron them dry???????

There are the 6 different colour blocks and 7 of each which makes 42 blocks all up??????? plus two that were made many years later and the backing is the same but the colour blocks the fabric is much later and have not faded at all and they are quiet a different dye and weave of fabric.

I bought on ebay about 15 years ago.  No one bid on them and I could not bear to think they would been chucked in to a rubbish collects bin!!!!!!  My idea was to may be reconstruct

I started playing around with lay out

them again as they has once been a quilt and washed many times and unfortunately the red bleed, it is the only really bright colour now as the other fabrics are all very very faded

zoom in and you can see how bright the red still is and the bleeding sadly.

so it makes me think they are older than I first thought 15 years ago when they arrived. Some one had painstakingly unpicked all the blocks I guess the quilt was disintegrating and only the blocks were worth saving.  They are made of very thin muslin.

OK now we can see a secondary pattern forming in the white fabric

15 years ago I did not have the knowledge I have now on what to do with them as far as making them in to a quilt,  we also have some lovely very fine light weight iron on fabrics for backing red-work embroidery which would stabilise these fabrics and allow me to quilt them also with out tearing the fabric with the stitches.

Now I can see a large white square on points with little star points white oblongs and small squares on points too.

I first just laid them in colour piles this did nothing for me, turned them a few times then knew there had to be a secondary patten there some where I would like??????

OK I can see the secondary pattern now clearly , make 3 more of these and we have a quilt cover??????

I have soaked two of the blocks in hot water for 20 mins as natural fabric has a memory and it takes at least 20 mins before you can reset this. It did make a big difference to the line up of the pattern as I was able to set the square on my drawn 91/2″ square I had drawn on an old cotton pillow slip then I iron the blocks dry, but after cutting the blocks to as close as I could to a 91/2″ sqaure I still have 1/4 or more missing in many of the corners, I was thinking of tea dying some fine muslin and adding pieces of fabric like a crazy quilt then cutting them back to a 91/2″ block. ????? any suggestion would be very much appreciated.

Two blocks I have reset by soaking in hot water for 20 mins, then ironed dry in a 91/2" drwn square on my ironing board. It has sure made a difference but you can see there is still a large 1/2" gap there?????

Well thats what I have been playing at the last 2 hours instead of sorting more boxes????

Yesterday I pulled this one out

The 4 seasons silk on silk

and I wonder why I never finsihed quilting it as I still love it as much as when I first started making it???????

Cheers Glenda