So here we are, years later and the mojo to get the quilt top together has finally arrived.
The blocks I didn't care for were the station wagon and a water can with flowers. It was designed for raw edge applique, my blocks are turned edge. As you can see the applique is very small. Some of the raw edge designs had small points and impossible angles for me to turn under so I changed them to suit my style of applique.
After staring at the design wall for what seemed like forever I had an idea for two new blocks. The quilt pattern name is called Farm Memories. My grandparents had a small farm when I was a child so I started taking a trip down memory lane, what could I add to this quilt? It took some time of walking their farm in my mind until I came up with a plan. A truck and a hay wagon! During the summers I spent a lot of time at grannies house, she was a free babysitter. One summer I helped put up hay. It's not a fun job, but it had to be done. Just me, grannie and gramps. What made it so memorable was my grannie never wore britches, only dresses, well except for this one hay day. The night before we were to put up hay she took an old long skirt and made them into britches. I couldn't help laughing at her a time or two throughout the day. She looked so funny in britches and she was constantly adjusting and tugging on them. She didn't know how any woman could wear them on a daily basis.
Anyway...some of you might remember my truck quilts from a few years ago. This one was called Autumn Memories.
The truck and hay wagon was inspired by that day on the farm.
I quickly found the old files, resized them, printed out the new templates and pulled the fabrics. The truck and wagon will be separated into two blocks. Fitting them both in one block would make the applique too small for me to make.
Hello Quilting Friends! Yes, removing stains from quilt blocks is a piece of cake. Almost weekly in the quilting social media world I see a quilter who is at their wits end trying to remove a stain from a quilt. Quilters being kind and generous people for the most part offer up their best advice. More often than not the advice requires a deep pocket...$$$$. Well I'm here to tell you specialty products aren't always the best. Ever heard of Occam's Razor? In laymen's terms it means the simplest solution is usually the best solution.
Marketing experts do an amazing job convincing us of our need for their products. Not just in the quilting field but in every field of our purchasing.
But today we're going to focus on products for stains on quilts. In the past I've used 3 different products claiming to safely and effectively remove stains from my quilts. Stains like yellowing, blood, grease and bleeding dyes. All have failed me in one way or another. They either didn't work or worked so well they ruined my fabric. All were expensive.
I'm not mentioning brands because it's political. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, you understand, right? Do what you like, spend what you want. I'm here to tell you what has worked better for me and is cheap. It all boils down money and effectiveness. If I can get the same or better results at less cost it makes sense. Why pay $500 for a hammer when Lowe's sells the same hammer for $25? I'm sure most of you remember this being uncovered in our government back in the 80's. But lets not go down the slippery slope of politics.
In a previous post (HERE) I shared my yellowed UFO blocks and the start of a test for removing the yellowing. Well it worked and for just pennies. No bleeding or fading of the fabrics. In the image below you can see the test block on top is whiter than the one on the bottom.
This method of cleaning them was an idea from Kelly Kline on live Facebook video. Kelly specializes in quilting vintage quilt tops and linens. In the video she had some discolored vintage linens soaking in ammonia to remove mold. The finished product was much whiter. She then laid them out in the sun to dry and bleach them out even more. The old wives tale of this whitening fabrics must be true because Kelly does it all the time with great success. I was willing to go that far to fix these blocks but luckily I only needed to do the first part of soaking the blocks.
So it was time to soak all the blocks in a 7 to 1 mixture. That's 7 parts hot water to 1 part ammonia. Then I added 1 tsp on Dawn blue dish soap. Dawn was my idea. Both of these smell horrid. I think Dawn dish soap smells like a sour dish cloth but I keep it on hand for tough jobs like stain removal from clothing. It works better than any stain removing laundry product I've used in the past. Just a little dab and a little elbow grease and like magic stains are gone.
Anyway back to my blocks. The magical stain removing mixture was mixed up in a Rubbermaid container. Then I folded each block in half, layering them in individually. Gave them a little squishing action. By squishing I mean pushing the blocks down into the mixture, pushing them from side to side just enough to make sure the mixture was touching every part of all the blocks. Being aggressive with the squishing would cause fraying so I was very gentle. The blocks were left to soak overnight.
The next day I was shocked by the results. Look at the water! Sure the Lemon scented ammonia made a slight yellow tint to the water but this is brown....EWW.
The yukky water was poured off and the rinsing process began.
Here I've removed them from the plastic container and added about two inches of water. Gave them a very gentle squish up and down in the water. Then I drained the tub and repeated the process 2 more times.
To neutralize and remove smell of the ammonia I added some white vinegar to the 3rd tub of water. How much? I just dumped it in, maybe 2 cups of white vinegar. And again with the light squish to make sure the vinegar had saturated every fiber. The tub was emptied and filled again to remove the vinegar. Of course there was more squishing.
When the water had drained from the tub the blocks were rolled up and squished several times. Then I carefully unrolled them.
One at a time they were removed. I would hold them up for just a little bit to allow some of the water to drip out.
The blocks were gently placed in a stack on top of two old towels that had been folded in half separately. Another folded towel was placed on top. Then I rolled them into a jelly roll, leaving one towel unrolled. It was just there to help absorb any excess water. Once rolled it was time for another gentle squish to help remove the water. Excessive squish/squeeze will cause excessive wrinkles so be careful. The jelly roll was left to work it's magic while I cooked super.
About 2 hours later I transferred the jelly roll into the Studio. My pretty blocks look as good as new but they need to hang to dry. If I were to iron these right now with them wet it would shrink the blocks. And if I were to toss them in the dryer....oh what a mess that would be.
Thankfully quilt frame makes a great clothesline. They should be dry by morning.
By the way here was very little fraying, if any.
A few days later I finally took the blocks of the makeshift clothesline and gave them a press with no steam. They are as good as new and it was as easy as pie.
And the best thing, it was cheaper than water pie! Water Pie? Yes ma'am there is a water pie recipe from the depression error. It might be recipe we need to keep on hand. I found this awhile back when looking for a recipe of some sort. Check it out, Water Pie, Paula Deen approved. It was her first time making the pie suggested by one of her followers.
(in my best Paula Deen southern accent) ......
Thanks Y'all for stoppin' by my little ole spot in Podunk! HA!HA!HA!
What a shocker right? Me having another UFO dresden quilt. There's something about the dresden quilt block that keeps me coming back for more. This quilt was started in 2017. It was a free block of the month by Quilt Doodle Designs.
I've completed all of the blocks but the last two alternating blocks. I printed one of them back in 2017, now I need to find the last block PDF file on one of my many flash drives. It might be easier to purchase the one block pattern.
If you're interested in this quilt it's now available for purchase in her pattern shop here. Each block can be purchased separately or as a complete quilt pattern.
Most of the fabrics I chose for this quilt are Lori Holt prints but there's a few other prints from other designers mix in with them.
All of the blocks were stored in this 2 gallon zip lock bag just like my other dresden quilt I'm currently working on. When I found these bags I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Twelve inch blocks fit in them perfectly.
The Sugar and Spice dresden blocks came out of the bag looking perfect. But these blocks have yellowed. I'm not sure if I used a different starch or if maybe one of the fabrics caused the yellowing but I need to fix the problem before assembling them into a quilt top.
To make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me I decided to pull out the bolt of background fabric I was saving for the backing of the quilt. It too was stored in plastic. The plastic bag for the bolt came from a package of batting.
Again, I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture but there is a definite yellowing of the quilt block to the left of the line I added to the image. Luckily I think I know how to remove the yellowing. There's a few products out there made for removing the yellowing of vintage fabrics. However I'm going to try something suggested by Kelly Kline. She works almost exclusively with vintage quilt tops and linens. She suggests ammonia and water, then if needed a product called Retro Clean. You can read more about her process here and here.
Well I'm going to try an ammonia and dawn dish soap overnight soak. Then in the morning I'll rinse the one block and hang to dry in front of a fan. I'll let you know how it goes in tomorrows blog post.
While I'm waiting for the magic to happen in the laundry room I need to come up with a plan for finishing the quilt. The finished layout looks like this. The green vine with nothing on it isn't doing much for me. Not that is bad. You know me, I have a hard time sticking to a pattern.
A few google searches for border ideas and I found a few that have promise. Just how fancy do I want to get? Do I want pieced or applique? There's plenty of fabric left in the project box to do anyone of the borders below. There's also plenty of time to mull over these ideas and look for more if needed.
During a mini burst of energy yesterday I decided the studio need a quick cleanup. It didn't take long to get side tracked when emptying my scrap bucket that sits on the cutting table. Quilters have the prettiest trash, don't we? There must be something to do with them. Out of the trash they came. Now what can to do with them?....HMM...an epiphany! And within just a few minutes these adorable little cloths pins were made.
During the studio clean up the decision was made to take the En Provence off the design wall for a few days. To be quite honest I'm tired of the mess it has created. For all you Bonnie lovers, it's still in plain view, folded up nice and neat and sitting on my desk. I WILL FINISH THIS THING IF IT KILLS ME! But for now there's other things that need to be done. At the beginning of the month I decided to take some time off from designing quilts in order work out of my comfort zone. This years plan is to do a few BOM's and quilt-a-longs.
The first Free BOM on the list is Quilt Doodle Designs 2017 Traditional Mystery. As you can see it's a Dresden quilt pattern and I love Dresden's. The mystery in this quilt is what will be appliqued in the Dresden's. By the looks of the quilt design I'm thinking there might be a tad more applique throughout the quilt. The great thing about this mystery quilt is you can work ahead by making all the Dresden blocks. Then just add the free center applique at the start of each month. If your interested in joining in or collecting the free patterns click here and here. Now let me warn you the pattern is only free for the month it is released. When the new clue comes out the previous months pattern is no longer free. So get now, it's only free for another week.
Now that the studio is somewhat clean I can start making Dresden's. This Dresden block calls for 16 blades. The Dresden ruler I own makes 20 blades per block. By using the template provided I made my own ruler from Plexi-glass. I've discussed this several time here on my blog. You can read more about making your own templates here, here, here and here.
Okay lets pick the fabrics. This is one of favorite things about quilting...Petting the fabric! I've been waiting for just the right project for Lori Holt's Calico Days FQ Bundle. This line is so sweet, the little cherry prints are my favorite.
While this line of fabric is absolutely stunning on it's own I wanted a few more prints just so it could be scrappier. Can you spy the 8 fabric additions that aren't Lori Holt? If not that means I chose well.
Let the pressing and cutting begin!
One Dresden down, 11 more to go. Cindy's pattern suggests we do some curved piecing to add the center. Well you know me and curved piecing don't get along. Appliqueing the center circle to the block is the method I'll be using. I contacted Cindy asking permission to share my technique for changing her pattern. She graciously gave me permission to share my technique and tutorial with you. So as soon as I can get a tutorial ready I'll show you how not to do curved piecing.
Since I don't have time to create my own patterns this year and I love to sew up quilts I've a new found interest in free quilt block of the months. Well when I saw Cindy Staub's new BOM I knew it was for me. You can find more information about this FREE BOM at her blog QuiltDoodledesigns.
Dresden's have long been my go to for a quick and easy quilt. I absolutely love them and have made several over the years. The fun thing about Cindy's dresden BOM is there will be some applique added to each block. I see so many great possibilities for this quilt and I can't wait to see what she's going to add to the basic Dresden design.
The best part of a new project is picking out the fabrics. If you don't share my love of selecting fabrics Cindy has put together a bundle that can be purchase on her Etsy page. Aren't they just adorable?!
Hurry on over to Cindy's blog for all the details. The first block is going to be released tomorrow! But there's no need to worry, there's plenty of time to finish it before the next one comes out in February. Well I'm off to see what I can pull from my stash for this project. See you soon with my fabric pull...or my first block!
