Vintage: Pretty Posies

 Coming up with an idea to use for vintage took me awhile. I ran through a gamut of ideas, none of which seemed to feel right. In the end, I pulled out vintage fabrics and just played around a bit. 

All of the fabrics used in this little quilt are vintage, dating back a couple of decades or more, with the exception of the backing. 

The background fabric is part of a sleeve from an old (and well loved) denim shirt of my husband's. I decided to leave it in the "sleeve shape" because I thought it added a fun twist to the quilt, and it reminded me of a window view for some reason. 

The "table" is a piece of fabric that I remember as a dress for my mom. It is a little sheer with little nubs of thread throughout. I'm not sure what type of fabric it is. 

The vase is from my stash of my grandmother's fabrics. It is cut in a hexie shape, although it is a very wonky hexie, as you can see. I'm not sure who cut the shape, that is the shape I found it in. 

The crocheted lace was made by my grandmother. I've been looking for a chance to use that in one of my quilts, so I'm glad it worked in this little piece! 

The posies, or flowers, are cut from a vintage handkerchief that came from either my grandmother, my great aunts, or my mother. I cut around the flowers and then machine stitched them to the quilt. 

I attached each little piece by raw edge applique with my sewing machine. The trickiest part was stitching around the flowers, and getting them overlapping the lace just so. It all worked out well and went together quickly. 

I kept the quilting very simple and subtle. I stitched straight lines 2 inches apart, then added a serpentine stitch in between. I used Aurifil 50 wt thread in Dove Grey (#2600) for the quilting. 

For the backing, I had this piece on my shelf. I bought this fabric a few years ago for a specific purpose. Since I can no longer recall what that specific purpose was (can you relate??), it has been used for backings. 

I finished the little quilt by binding it with more of the denim shirt fabric. The fabric is so well worn, it was very soft and easy to stitch through. 

So that's what I came up with for the vintage challenge - using vintage fabrics in my stash! I look forward to seeing everyone else's challenge pieces! 

Wendy

Harmony

Harmony. I spent a lot of time thinking about this prompt. I looked up the definition, I thought about harmony in music and in nature. I asked hubs and friends what came to mind for harmony. Ideas popped into my head, but nothing really felt right. 

One day, I sent a text to two of my quilting friends asking if either of them would like this panel. For some reason, neither of them were interested (yes, I'm being snarky). 

As I sat and stared at this panel, a thought came to me: Can I take something out of harmony and put it back into harmony in a different way? Hmm. That might be fun to explore. 

There was cutting involved. A lot of cutting. Very fussy cutting. I took my time, and I used a few different sizes of scissors because some of the pieces were small and detailed. 

Once the cutting was done, I considered how to attach the new pieces onto the new background. I opted for a glue stick; it was not a good choice, but I made it work. I neglected to take photos of this process, but it was a sticky mess. 

Then came the quilting. I managed to find thread that matched quite well, which made me happy because I really wanted to hide the free motion quilting I was doing. It also made it difficult to photograph, so here are a few photos. Hopefully you can see a little bit of the detail. 

And here's Harmony, in a new way. Except for the background and face, all the parts are from the panel. 

This finished quilt measures 20" x 24". The background fabric is from a Tula Pink line, and to quilt the background, I randomly followed the swirls here and there, using a light blue thread. 

This was definitely not what I thought I would end up with for the Harmony challenge, but I sure had fun! 

Wendy