LOL It’s been three years since I posted? That’s kind of hilarious, especially given how I discovered that was the case. I came here to find a picture of a quilt I’d assumed I’d posted when it was finished (a couple years ago). But I discovered I hadn’t updated to mention the quilt being done or posted a photo of it. Wewps.
So let me do that now LOL
I have a love love/hate thing with scrappy quilts. I love how efficient they are at using up scraps and making use of every little bit of fabric. I dislike how ‘messy’ they can sometimes turn out.
That’s why I always try to tame them down in some way either by using high contrast blocking like with this log cabin or by using a quieter fabric to set the blocks. Like I did in this quilt I made for my daughter, Danica:
This quilt is pretty special. The nine patch blocks were recovered from a quilt my mother made me when I was very young. It was her very first quilt and I loved it very hard, so by the time I was in my thirties it was pretty clear the poor thing was doomed.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, though, so I broke out the seam ripper and found a few 3×3 sections where the fabric had stood up well enough to be reclaimed. I pulled that out and put it on point with a dark blue marbled fabric to mellow it a wee bit.
Then, because Danica wanted the background to be yellow I got eight different shades of yellow fabric and created a gradient of darker to lighter for the yellow. The border is made up of different shades of yellow (whatever was left over) framed with the same blue I used to surround the blocks. It also includes a small swatch of the fabric from my grandmother’s wedding dress (I did not cut up the dress. It’s a long story. For another day).
For the back I used the very first quilt top I’d ever made — a patchwork thing made of flannelette that I’d sewn together while I was pregnant with Dani but never actually got around to finishing.
I tied it using dark colours in the center of the nine patch and dark blue parts and light colours which would blend in on the yellow patches.
So this quilt of Dani’s has bits from my first ever quilt, from my mother’s first ever quilt and my grandmother’s wedding dress all melded together.
She loves it and I think it exemplifies patchwork done right.
I had a whack of scraps I wanted to use up, so I cut them into squares and sewed those into nine patches. Then I took the nine patches, cut them up and sewed them back together. And then I took those sliced up nine patches, paired them with this solid fabric, cut them up and pieced them back together…
