Saturday morning I got a sudden urge to make a quilt.
This isn’t the craziest thing ever, though I will admit it’s a little strange. At one point in my life I considered myself a “quilter”. I had piles and piles of fabric, quilt design software, lots of WIPs (works in progress) and I even completed four quilts. I gave three of them away to newlyweds and new babies and one hung on my bedroom wall for a number of years. I haven’t worked on a quilt since well before my own kids were born though. As the cobbler’s children have no shoes, so too do the quilter’s children have no mom-made quilts. So sad.
I’ve long wanted to make a simple nine patch quilt using lots and lots of different fabrics. Nothing arty or coordinated — just a basic patchwork quilt with a lot of variety. Every time I use a suitable fabric as part of another project I cut at least one 4 1/2 inch square from the scraps with the intention of adding it to this quilt. I have a pretty good collection of these squares already so this weekend I decided the time was right to get down to business.
While I was digging through my stash, I came across a pile of vintage fabrics that I’d forgotten all about. My father-in-law gave them to me about ten years ago when he found them on the high shelf of a closet. His grandma had been a quilter and he’d stashed them away many years before. A few of them had pieces cut out of them (quite obviously for a grandma’s flower garden quilt) but most of them are straight off the bolt. I decided I needed to dig into them for my quilt, so I washed them and cut some of the fabric into patches.
Some of the patterns and colors were were so ugly they burned my eyes, but I liked the eight pictured above enough to use. This pink, green and red flower pattern is one of my favorites.
I also loved this one with it’s purple, brown and orange dahlias and mums. This was the smallest piece of fabric in the pile and I only managed to cut four squares from it. I’m so bummed that I don’t have more of this one!
I love cherry motifs, so this was another favorite. The colors on this one are super.
This last one is my very favorite though! I love the big crazy raindrops and the cute little people holding their pink and green umbrellas.
I’ve got about a yard each of most of these and now I’m trying to think of ways to use these fabrics besides the small bits I’ll be adding to the quilt. Any ideas? What would you do with these fabrics?
