I had a marvelous time at my regular Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild meeting last night. The speaker, Janice Maroni, was talking about sewing attractive quilted coats and even offered to come back for workshops.
Although the coats were lovely, I have very mixed feelings about that. Quilted clothing becomes very dated very quickly, whereas quilted QUILTS are always classics! I wanna make the classic traditonal quilts.
Yesterday, before the meeting, I got inspired by the lovely sunny day and the clear driveway to put some borders on an old UFO. This quilt is "Mr. Bojangles", a Civil War reproduction. It had no pattern, I just started sewing up some 9-patches and snowballs. I wanted an old traditional pattern to work with the Civil War fabrics. This is also known as "Twisted Ribbons."
I wanted the ribbons of light colored fabric to float out onto the borders as well as I wanted the borders to make the quilt bigger. I auditioned several ways of doing this and here is the way I did it.
The scrappy light borders are 3" finished and the wide outer border is a 6" wonderful Marcus Brothers large scale stripe from their Mill Girls collection. You can see that the spring March breezes were wreaking havoc with the edges of the quilt top!
My "Husband Wonderful", Felix, helped me measure it across the centers and it is now a respectable 84 3/4" square. Hooray!
That medium colonial blue that you see sprinkled throughout the blocks of the center is a very good match to the blue in the border. I bought more of it and I'll use that for the binding. I think that I'd like to quilt this one with Baptist Fans to keep the old fashioned theme intact.
Thank you to everybody for you super-supportive comments yesterday when I was whining! If you have any low moments, I offer you this exuberant film star's advice of how to cheer yourself up:
"Raven," the magnificent!
Yesterday, before the meeting, I got inspired by the lovely sunny day and the clear driveway to put some borders on an old UFO. This quilt is "Mr. Bojangles", a Civil War reproduction. It had no pattern, I just started sewing up some 9-patches and snowballs. I wanted an old traditional pattern to work with the Civil War fabrics. This is also known as "Twisted Ribbons."
Thank you to everybody for you super-supportive comments yesterday when I was whining! If you have any low moments, I offer you this exuberant film star's advice of how to cheer yourself up:
4 comments:
Raven knows how to enjoy the moment! We could probably all benefit from that example. Snow still on the ground in March? Roll in it! Enjoy it! One day soon we will be complaining of the heat and would give anything to roll in the snow. Maybe I'll go do that before my snow is gone. : )
We are such kindred spirits where traditional quilts (and even quilted clothing) are concerned. I love your creation--and that blue is a wonderful shade!
I can't begin to tell you how much I love this quilt, Vic. It is fabulous! I should be able to calculate how large the squares are based on your final measurement but math is not one of my strengths. I hope you'll please tell me the dimensions of the squares-- all of them. I want to make a quilt like this! Thanks.
Vic, love your traditional quilt... It looks so much more complicated than it really is. Nice border too. But, honestly, having to measure on the driveway??? I'm not sure I'd be quilting if I had to do that.
I'm so sorry you are having a time finding the perfect dog. I know rescues move dogs from the south up to the north but I guess the labs and lab mixes aren't going there. I work with a Springer spaniel group but we don't cover your area. Good luck finding the perfect companion fur baby.
i do love that border...what a perfect idea and use for a stripey...i always have difficulty with them, love them and buy them but have problems using them. don't fret my friend, we are all products of our upbringing--good, bad or indifferent. wishing you sunshiny days from now on...and NO SNOW! ours is just about gone thanks to mr rain and our ocean locale...
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