I’m shifting gears while my vintage linens quilt is still on the longarm. The quilting is finished, my dilemma is that I do not have a large enough area to take it off the machine, lay it out and trim to bind. I have a plan: using my channel locks I’m going to put a light pink thread in the needle and baste top/down one side/across the bottom/up the remaining side, remove from the longarm and lay out on the king bed. I’ll lay a medium size cutting mat underneath the quilt and trim to size via scissors. If anyone sees the folly in this let me know asap!

In the mean time I’ve started a new project to keep me busy when I’m not binge-learning EQ8.

Meet vintage summer weight bed coverlet:

Are you familiar with the garment fabric called Lawn? For a very good short article on this fabric: click here. Lawn is remarkably thin/light weight. I’m showing it here laying atop a white bedspread.

Purchased on Ebay sometime earlier this year, I was very pleased when it was delivered to my home. Now, let me say “my-oh-my was this item dirty”! So dirty in fact that I could hardly wait to wash my hands each time I worked on the unfinished embroidery. Not particularly stained dirty, just full of the dust and grime from the passage of time. That rhymed! Be warned, I will be addressing poetry again further down in this post…

This arrived from the Ebay seller with about 90% of the hand embroidery completed. A quick trip to ABC Stitchery in Spring, Tx allowed me to purchase the right Satin DMC colors to finish the project. Oh goodness! After doing the embroidery work for the first time with the satin floss I believe the original creator of this work most likely died of frustration. Satin embroidery floss is horrible to work with! Sure, it looks great but she did THE ENTIRE PROJECT with this crazy stuff!

The sides of the piece were cut so the green Lawn fabric salvage was the edge. The top and bottom were beginning to fray so I serged an edge using care so as not to serge/cut the fabric, only the threads that had come loose.

 

The overall condition of the piece (minus the dust and grime) was excellent. There are maybe 5 or 6 of these little less than 1/4″ spots on the piece. I am thrilled that they are not rust!

Remember earlier I said there was more poetry to come? There are tiny, and I do mean tiny little holes in 4 or 5 places. I’m assuming they are areas where tiny little creatures (silverfish?) munched. So, think back to your childhood…what internationally famous poem about munching insects comes to mind?

The Termite  by Ogden Nash

Some primal termite knocked on wood And tasted it, and found it good! And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today.

With the hand embroidery finished and the raw edges serged, it was time to think about how to clean this beauty. As the piece has a lot of black satin embroidery floss, I was concerned about the floss fading onto the pink and/or green Lawn. Blue Dawn dishwashing detergent to the rescue! You might know that Dawn (the blue original Dawn) acts in the same manner as Synthropol in that it binds errant dyes in the soak water, hampering them from re-attaching to the fibers/fabric.

The picture below is the water after the piece had been submerged only about 20 seconds!

Here’s how horrible the soak water looks after 2 minutes! Yikes! Like I said, this piece was dirty!

I let the piece soak in the first tub of water about 10 minutes, drained, lightly rinsed in warm tap water and put it into a second tub of Dawn soak water. Once again, the water is just horrible. I will continue this process all morning until the soak water is clear and clean.

I just realized that I have no place to lay this piece out to dry. Hm….. I’ll have to think on that for the rest of the morning. It very well may have to be draped over a shower curtain rod.

So what will I do with this beautiful piece when it’s clean? I will lay it atop a solid very light pink cotton quilting fabric, double batt, Hobbs white 80/20 and also their Poly Down and use the same light pink solid fabric as backing. Get everything loaded on the longarm (Innova) and quilt! What thread will I use? WonderFil of course! At this point I’m not sure if I’ll use Deco Bob which is 80 weight or go with Invisafil at 100 weight. I’ll keep you posted!

***house update: I’m pulling out my hair trying to find a stacked stone for the fireplace wall:

Until next time, blessings to all and happy quilting,

Rhonda

Oh happy day! I finished the quilting early yesterday afternoon, later I added up the quilting hours in this project: 49 hours, 50 minutes! I think it’s been worth every single minute!

Here are the particulars: double batting using Hobbs white 80/20 on the bottom and Hobbs Poly Down on top. You may know I’m a WonderFil thread crazed quilter! For this entire project, no matter what color I was quilting over I’ve used WonderFil Deco Bob color 104 in the needle. I have a prewashed bleached muslin as my back fabric.  And for anyone keeping track, this project took 14 size M longarm bobbins. When finished (trimmed and bound) this quilt will measure about 85×92″.

One of my sweet friends remarked that I’d go through withdrawal when finished, I chuckled, but now that it’s happened I find she is spot on!

The block below has a small white-on-white hand embroidery doily as the centerpiece.

In the block below I used the entire doily, laying it atop the block and stitching it in place with the sewing machine. This way I could keep the beautiful machine produced edging.

Again, I’ve used the entire oval-shaped doily:

This yellow tulip with a blue bow is one end of a dresser scarf.

 

One of two vintage quilt blocks I used in this piece:

A lovely hand embroidered basket doily with a hand crocheted edging.

The second of the two vintage blocks used in this quilt.

Initially I had trouble with this block as it appears to be sideways. I’m glad I used it in it’s original orientation:

The block below is made up of two vintage doilies from a matching set of 3, two small and one large. I layered one of the “smalls” on top of the “large” and stitched them to the quilt block:

I’ve included the picture below to show how the border swags tie in nicely with the vintage linen blocks:

One of my favorite blocks is the “lady with watering can”. If I could quilt it differently I would make the feather arches on each side a little more arching/curved:

Well, this block gave me headaches! While quilting the small ovals inside the cross stitch grids, it was my intention to have the ovals on the left side tilt in the opposite direction as those on the right. Oops! I wasn’t upset enough to un-quilt…

Still one of my favorite blocks below!

I’m looking forward to taking this quilt off the longarm, trimming to size and binding. Hopefully I can utilize a few classroom tables at a local quilt shop to trim as right now there’s nowhere in the house to accomplish this simple task. 😦

***house update: nothing new to report. We were hopeful to have all repairs finished by Thanksgiving but remember, there were in excess of 40,000 homes damaged in the Hurricane Harvey flooding and there are not 40,000 construction teams to handle the tremendous amount of work to be done. Patience here is key! Let’s just say I don’t think we will be putting up a Christmas Tree in the great room this year.

Next project: I shopped the International Quilt Festival vendors looking for just the right fabrics to begin another Vintage Linens quilt project. I want to use the predominately dark ivory/beige doilies and trims in my collection. Most of the 1930’s reproduction fabrics have white rather than ivories. I found a fantastic grouping of various manufacturers fabrics that I think will be just the ticket! I wish I had taken the time to properly learn EQ7, it would be so helpful in developing these original patterns! Maybe in a week or two I’ll make myself sit down with the manual and go through the program step by step! My sweet friend Veronica makes it look so easy! Veronica, do you hire out?

Let me remind you, if you ever have questions about anything I talk about in my blog, you’ll find my email address below, just send me an email!

Until my next post, happy quilting, keep praying for the flood victims and blessings to all,

Rhonda