Vintage Traditions

I have been on a mission to complete a few UFO's. I still love my vintage fabric collection, it's so soft, and the colors are muted. Most of it came in a large green garbage bag at a garage sale for 50 cents. Another bunch was given to me from a friend in the quilt guild, who cleaned house for an older lady. Many of the pieces are so small I could not cut out a 1 1/2" square. I finished appliqueing circles on the center of my mini Dresden Plates. The plate is 6" and I have over 40 of them, with half the circles left to do. I had to cut the sashing and corner squares, so I got to play with my vintage fabric. I also had to make two more blocks from scratch, good thing my pattern files are so good, I found the one I wanted immediately. The mini plates have got pointed wedges, so it looks like a saw blade.

I also have some larger 12" Dresden Plate blocks, that needed to be appliqued to the muslin. They have scallops on each wedge and quiet a lot of plaids. Some one gave me the larger blocks, some complete, some needed a few more wedges, and a bunch of loose wedges. I finished up the plates, cutting vintage fabric as needed, until I had 20 blocks. Both the mini and the large plates are appliqued onto new muslin, but all the rest of the fabric is vintage. Only 4 more blocks to applique. Cutting the larger 16" long sashing for these blocks, really challenged my stash. I had to piece the fabrics to get the longer sections. Many of the wedges are already pieced fabric. When you work with scraps, many of the older quilts have pieced fabric to cut out a certain size square.

I finally got my mini put together with wide muslin borders and blocks in the four corners.

Another vintage project I decided to finish, was the vintage Hankies folded into butterflies. I thought I had enough blocks done to just add sashing. NOT! I had 14, what an odd number to set together. So I decided I needed to make 6 more blocks, to make a large quilt. I had extra hankies, that I pick up at thrift or antique stores, and also from garage sales. I had gotten a light green with purple and blue butterfly fabric the last time we went to the coast to use as sashing. So I am still doing applique to finish the last few Butterflies and Dresden Plates, I am determined to get these FINISHED!!!!

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see other wonderful textile artists.