Cspoonquilt

 I find these pictorial fabrics fascinating.  Barbara Brackman recently wrote a post on some really outstanding examples of some late 1800's pictorial cretone crazy quilts.  The link is below. http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2021/05/pictorial-crazy-quilts-in-cretonne.html  As they say a picture is worth a thousand words and in these quilts the fabric tells many stories about the history and the esthetics of their times.  I particularly like the one showing Oscar Wilde with his signature sunflower in this quilt.   Here's a closer look.  Sorry it's not a great picture being blown up like that but you can see the figures and get the flavor of Oscar Wilde's 'dandy' posture and sunflower.  There are several more patches in this quilt below that show Oscar with red background (upper left and lower right).    Be sure to check out Barbara's post to see some more or these wonderful quilts.  I would love to make a quilt in this 'flav...

 I found a couple of baggies of 'left over' scraps recently in the guild Flea market.  All pre-cut, ready to sew and cheerful prints!  How could I resist!   This first one had  a lot of the units already sew so I just followed the model  to finish the rest of the blocks.  Sometimes mindless sewing is the most  fun and relaxing... I had fun playing with the layout.  It's a remarkably flexible block pattern when you start spinning the blocks around.  I like the random look! This next one was a no brainer.  What's not to love about a 1-patch! Also very fun to play with placement! They will make wonderful gifts and all from just two little baggies of left-overs! A parting shot. I I promise this is the last picture I'll post of this quilt .  These are the happy recipients of this quilt at the Quilt Give Away last weekend.  My friend Helen sent me this picture.  It does my heart good to see this. Makes all the effort w...

Over the years I have finished a number of vintage tops.  Vintage tops which I purchased with the idea of quilting either by hand or machine.  They might sit around for awhile but eventually I would get them quilted.  I'm pretty sure this one holds the record for "sitting around"!  About 25 years! It spent over a week on the quilting frame because there's a lot of ruler work .  Why do I do this to myself?! I do like quilty challenges and this was most definitely a challenge! None of the lavender squares were actually square.   The worst actually measured 12" x 13". So finding a quilt pattern for them was a real problem.  I settled on the grid work because it did not have to be 'centered' on the squares.  It could just run off the edge when out of space........ Definitely not perfect but I think it's less distracting than a centered motif The backing was provided by my friend Sandy over at  Material Creations A nice counter balance to the...

 A fellow guild member donated this Broken star quilt top to my charitable small quilt group about 25 years ago.  The colors are really fabulous but the top had A Lot of Structural Problems.  I would get it out every year or so and wonder if I could fix it.  I finally decided a couple of years ago that I would simply trim off all the outer points which were quite wonky and tattered and square it up. That's as far as I got 'til recently because I really didn't know what I would do with it once I finished it.  But since CZU wants bed size quilts I finally found a charitable project that could use it!    I sewed some Borders on it and got it on the quilt frame!  I'm about half way done with the quilting.  A lot of ruler work which means a lot more time but I'm liking the way it looks! I've had a number of  long standing UFO's over the year but none has kind of haunted me the way this one has.  Maybe because I knew it would take a ...