Getting Shirty

 I mulled over lots of different ideas for this quarter's theme - Vintage - from replicating vintage patterns to trying out the vintage technique of Manx quilting but in the end the (re)discovery of these in my cupboard decided the project for me :)

I bought this set of hand-stitched hexagons several years ago at a Craft and Vintage fair, with no idea of what to do with them. In all honesty, I think that I felt a bit sorry that someone's work had ended up on a stall selling all sorts of odds and ends, so rescued them to leave them hanging about my cupboard for years! 

There is also a rather large bag of loved, but now redundant shirts in my cupboard.

So, I had a rummage through to see if there was anything that might work with the salvaged hexagons and found these. 

There were 15 hexagons in the original set purchased, but I whittled them down to 6 that were compatible in colour and also quilting cotton weight fabric. There were a couple that seemed to be made with heavier furnishing fabric that were very easy to dismiss :)

It was hard to tell exactly when the hexagons were created from the papers used, but it looked like it might have been in the early 1980's or possible even earlier in the late 1970's, so I reckon either of those definitely qualifies them as vintage! The shirts used in the blocks are not nearly so old, but as vintage in fashion can be as little as last season, I reckon they qualify too :)

I went with a traditional layout for this quilt as you can see. I know that this has ended up bigger than our usual art quilts and, indeed, is very far removed from the idea of an art quilt but I really wanted to make something that would give the hexagons a new lease of life. In a further nod to the notion of vintage I wanted to end up with something that was useful as well. 

 After cutting the blocks I was left with these pieces from the shirts so, in true vintage quilting fashion, I pieced them together randomly to create a backing for my hexagon quilt.

I didn't have quite enough shirt fabric left over so supplemented the pieced backing with strips cut from an old pillow case.

The blocks were shadow quilted around the edges and the hexagons were quilted with a zig-zag stitch around the outer and inner rings.

As you can see the quilt is not quite complete as I have not yet added a binding. I have struggled to find another shirt in a colour that will work for the binding so might have to broaden my search :) 

I hope to donate the finished quilt to Project Linus as I think that would be a fitting outcome for these vintage hexagons, don't you? 

Looking forward to seeing the results of my fellow Endeavourers vintage projects.