Thursday, February 9, 2012

More Orphan blocks


Now this is almost antique, LOL, well at least nearly vintage, blocks left from this quilt,

begun when we lived in Texas in the early '80's, it came to AZ with me in 1986. I had begun to hand quilt it and over the years managed to quilt about 2/3 of this KS quilt. After I acquired my first LA in 2000, I decided to machine quilt it and went about the laborious task of removing the not-so-great hand quilting. This took quite a while, the years rolled by and I realized that the backing wasn't large enough for the LA so it was again set aside. Eventually a couple of years ago, I enlarged the backing and quilted it intending to perhaps sell it-except that my SIL saw the picture and loved it so I gave the quilt to her and it graces their bed, more than 25 years since it was begun.
I was left with all the blocks that were intended for pillow shams, now not necessary for their smaller QS bed. These laid around for another few years until a couple of weeks ago I decided to use up some unfinished blocks and they became a quilt fit for a baby girl.

The backing is a pin dot and it's quilted with the folk-art floral all-over that I used on the big quilt.
This year I am focusing on finishing and quilting as many of this kind of thing from my stash as I can. I am still beginning new projects but am dedicated to also clear out old bits and pieces that have been ignored for too long. I have no daughters who might finish my UFO's.


8 comments:

Cheryl Willis said...

I 'thought 80's" when I saw the photo- that is not vintage- lol

One of my first machine quilting tops was a lone star that a friend started hand quilting (about 1/4 done.) she 'knew' she would never finish and I need to practice so..... I pinned it in and sewed a border to border right over her hand stitching.
I just loved petting that quilt after it was finished. Funny thing is she had started it about 20 yrs earlier and was quilting from the bottom up. One row short of being finished we ran out of backing material. Had to take the whole thing off the frame, add 8 inches to the back and re-pin to finish the last row.
Good thing we were friends b/c it was about enough to make me want to quit!
I smiled when you said you made a baby quilt from the shams, I have done that too! I get so sick of a group of fabrics that I put them aside until they surface again for a new TO DO.

Andee said...

Ros, you will live longer than all of us! But in case you can instruct hubby to divvy out those UFO's to the Huggy Bunch...we got you covered, lol!

momto8 said...

your sister in law has a good eye!

Lynette said...

Lol, Ros :D I'm on the same quest - rescuing my cousin's best UFOs opened my eyes about my own "life work." It's a really, really sweet quilt, btw.

Roslyn said...

Roslyn said...
OMG so you LA it right on top of the hand quilting! I don't think I could have done that, I had put so much work into it, all the folded sawtooth border etc, I am glad now that I frogged it!

Roslyn said...

Yep, need to dig out the old stuff & "git 'er done"!

Reddirt Woman said...

I've got an ink drawing of the dying swan from the ballet that I've never finished... It's close but not done. Don't know why. The only thing I can figure is that I started it during a really bad time as a sort of therapy and things got better but it still isn't done. It was started in the late '60'ies, so I guess I've got the vintage thing going on. I'm going to get it back out and finish it. You have inspired me.

BTW... love that beautiful quilt.

Hugs...

Gari in AL said...

I didn't used to have unquilted tops but now I think there are 4 or 5 just waiting. My goal is to get them all done this year. And my ongoing project plan is to be working on one UFO, one charity quilt, and one new project. Usually that keeps the "stock" moving. :-)