Vintage Fabrics

I received a package of vintage fabrics yesterday which a swapping friend had purchased at an estate sale. I am not an expert but I do have a good memory for fabrics and patterns and these are the colors and sort of patterns I remember from when I first became aware of quilts, which was back in the '50s. A cousin of my father's, an older woman, was the only person I knew who quilted. When we visited her she always had a quilt in progress. Looking at her quilts was far more interesting than the conversations about gardening or cooking or whatever the adults talked about.

This morning I ironed the fabrics which had been folded and crushed together. The photo above shows the smaller pieces, i.e., ones that were less than a quarter yard -- most pieces are irregular. I think they were not used for quilting -- except for the diamond shaped pieces of which there are six each, dark and light. I think they were left overs from clothing or household projects.
They all feel like 100% cotton, and I do believe they are old enough that very little polyester was being used in the fabrics generally available to home sewers. The fabrics in the bottom photo are larger pieces, mostly between a quarter and three-quarters of a yard. The printed lavender gingham actually is flocked. The lavender and the blue ginghams are true woven ginghams, not printed but the blue checks with the tiny flowers are printed.

It is fascinating to me to see a collection of vintage fabrics. If any readers of this blog are better versed in vintage fabrics than I am I'd love to hear how old you think these pieces might be. The pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Finsihing Another Quilt

Months ago I showed a picture of this quilt in progress. It's finally done [almost -- I have loose threads to tie and clip on the buttons]. This is the second in a year with the stripes turned into blocks with button embellishment. The first had real shirting stripes from a big armful of shirting samples. They were used up so when I wanted to make another I began collecting striped quilting fabrics.

As you see they have been cut in right angle triangles and sewn together to make patterned blocks. Some were remnants and because they were different sizes, so are the blocks, which was part of the plan. This is not entirely my own brainchild. I saw a picture of a shirting strip quilt with the shirting handled this way that was designed by Kaffee Fassett. But the button idea is my own. The top picture shows the center of the quilt where every block has buttons. There are no buttons on the border blocks although I'm thinking about adding them. As I so often write, it's very labor intensive so I hesitate.

The picture of most of the quilt which is below has, again, crummy color reproduction -- it's either me or my camera and probably some of both. I'm happy to have it done even with a question mark on the done. It is twin bed size. I've got another quilt with the center all done and ready for border and quilting that I'll tackle next week but that's going to take quite a while. Of course the star quilt is still in progress and so is another block quilt that I'm not ready to write about.

Mini Quilt

What a wonderful surprise when I opened a package from a swap friend, Heidi, and found she had made a mini quilt inspired by the candle holder Christmas present that I had pictured in a blog. Isn't this a wonderful quilt? She used fabrics that have some sparkle, she appliqued the "tile" pieces. As an extra, I now realize, looking at the quilt, that this has a very Chinese feel -- it suggests an interpretation of the I Ching. It's wonderful when artists inspire other artists.

Quilt National 2009

Nearly a year late in this comment about Quilt National 2009 -- but I am full of excuses. I try to get to the Midwest to see family on Quilt National years. It's about 150 miles from my brother's home in Indiana but a very nice drive to Athens, Ohio once I get around Cincinnati. But last year I had just moved from NYC to Cape Cod and was settling in here. I'm sorry I didn't get to Indiana because I missed seeing my favorite aunt who died just before Christmas. Of course, I also didn't get to Quilt National.

Recently when ordering another quilt book from Amazon the "you might also enjoy..." screen had the QN catalog and of course I knew I'd "also enjoy" -- as well as enjoy the discounted price. It arrived yesterday. I spent the evening with it. I've purchased all the former catalogs, usually at the time I saw the show. In those cases I carried the vision of the actual quils in my mind as I looked at the catalog. I find that size is usually a matter of mental adjustment because most pictures in the book give me the impression most of the quilts are the same size -- I read the dimension info carefully and try to adjust my mental picture but I'm not very good at doing that.

Of course texture is a big difficulty. Some art quilt books include smaller detail photos but QN's catalogs never do, so the viewer is almost forced to see the quilts as two dimensional objects which none of them are. Photographs are a very poor way to view art quilts. I think even sculptural objects are more satisfactorily seen in photographs than are quilts.

Because the great majority of the quilts in this show were abstract I feel even more that I missed an important experience by not seeing the show. In abstract works texture, material qualities of transparency or heaviness, as well as the complexity of the quilting are all extremely important. A book simply is no substitute.

I was very impressed at the geographical variety of quilters -- 16 of 80+ were from outside the US. Only a three or four of them were quilters whose works have been in former QN shows, a remarkable 3 were from Israel -- a small country with no quilting tradition. Happy as I am to have the book -- and I will return to it as I do to the catalogs of former QNs -- I am very sad that I didn't push myself to go see it.

A New Dawn Every Day

Before I moved here I never saw a dawn unless I as away from the city, which was very rare. When I moved to Cape Cod I was delighted to be able to choose an apartment that faced east. This time of year I am usually up at least a quarter of an hour before dawn, so I can make breakfast and generally have it eaten before the sky colors with the first of the dawn. Most often I have turned on the computer and am looking at news [I have no TV -- thus I have no audible commercials] and I'm sitting where the dawn is entirely visible if I turn my head just a little to the left. Often I stop and watch the glob of gold creep up through the bare branches of the trees and sometimes it is so bright I have to pull the middle of three shades on the wide window because it hits me blindingly.


Every now and then it is so splendid I open the nearby slider to the patio and step out in the cold to take a photo. These are two. Of course no two are alike which reminds me that really no two days are alike either. Some days, of course, it's gray and the clouds are thick and I only see lightness arrive. I don't suppose I'd want it to be otherwise. No philosophizing and no poetry -- the pictures are poetry enough.

Here are four little -- 4x6" -- journal quilts. One year I made a journal quilt for almost every day -- I never did an exact count but it's about 350. Each celebrates something that particularly impressed me that day. The frog above on a background of other frogs, celebrates a day in early summer when I fell asleep listening to the tree frogs chorusing outside an open window.


This black and white with a bit of red captures for me a concert given by the LeBeque sisters, duo-pianists -- on separate, nested grand pianos. They are not twins but they look very much alike except one wore a white pantsuit and the other black. They played several jazzy Polenc pieces, so this little quilt is both about them and about the music.


This swirly patterned fabric with gold glitters and many, many beads added represents another piece of music, Schubert's Great C major Symphony, his #9. It is not as supremely majestic as Beethoven's #9, but I probably love it almost as much.


And this last little piece is far, far more prosaic. It's title is "I can't believe I'm sunburnt at my age. I should have known better."

Doing a piece for every day was quite consuming, but it was also a great exercise in awareness. When you live each day knowing something about it is going to be immortalized [at least in your memory] you shift into a kind of awareness that is unusual and often wonderful.

Four More Stars

I've done four more stars. It's clear that I will do only four more of these because I won't have enough of the background fabric for four after that. So the quilt will be 3x4 blocks, probably with stripping and of course a border and will be something around 42x54 which is a very reasonable size for a throw.



As I work with Carol Doak's Fifty Fabulous Stars book, I admire her more and more. I had previously made 21 of her designs. Most of these are ones I had not made before. I supposed she planned these variations with a computer program but that doesn't detract from the constant interest. Plus she then sewed examples of every one of the fifty always making interesting color choices -- always different than I'm using.


If you look at the complexity or simplicity of the different stars, you'll also appreciate her design ability. The most complex of these four has 120 pieces in the block, the least complex has 40 pieces in the block -- and each block is 12x12. When the paper piecing methods have been mastered the sewing is not hard, although there are some places where you can see less than perfect sewing. But I do have to protest just a little that these blocks still have the paper on the back and have not been ironed so they were not lying totally flat when I photographed them.There is distortion. I'm sorry I cut off some of the tops.


I've discovered a way in which a digital camera is harder to use than the old fashioned film camera -- I was usually conscious of pressing my arms against my sides and pressing the film camera firmly against my nose when I pushed the shutter. With the digital camera, in order to line up the photo it must be held away from the face and I often move a bit. I'm going to purchase one of the digital cameras that has an old fashioned view finder, then I can hold it still. Also I won't have the sunny day problem of finding it hard to see the screen clearly. Meanwhile I've got four more blocks to sew together. I'm enjoying making this quilt a great deal.