Man, this vintage sheet love is going viral!

One of my favorite aspects of vintage sheet use is that you can get the same one over and over. I was instantly saddened by using my pretty pink rose sheet to back this quilt, but was able to pick up another on etsy… plus the same print in a yellow colorway! So, sooner or later, expect to see some wholecloth quilts from these.

I could have gotten a lot crazier with the sheet-buyin’, but my Paypal account is a tad worn out after show application fees and some other supply needs, so I restricted myself to some fat quarters. Oh, how I love these!

Not really what I originally had in mind when I initially started planning a very sweet, muted palette like these, but I am nonetheless in love - and looking forward to piecing something super sunny, like Jeannine’s cute WIP!

For more inspiration - not that we need it, with all these gorgeous sheets around - check out the vintage sheets Flickr pool. Yum!

It’s Quilt Monday on a Tuesday, y’all - the very best kind!

I know three straight days of work sort flies in the face of the whole Labor Day concept, but, sometimes, it’s the getting up and getting out, the preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet that’s the real effort.

Between Saturday morning and Monday night, I sewed 5 aprons, cut out 12 more, cut and sewed two quilt tops, finished tying the Summer Breeze quilt, and machine quilted a top I made something like three years ago. I still managed to host a Civ 4 marathon, have dinner with neighbors, and read half a book on the Carter Family.

I’m not bragging so much as listing the virtues of a 72-hour life drop-out. If you want to get stuff done, do nothing.

And now, show and tell:

The Summer Breeze Quilt, dropped carelessly on the floor to reveal the vintage sheet I used for the back. I’m getting so much more joy (is that possible???) out of working on quilts when I use these vintage sheets. I don’t know if it’s the extra shot of color, or just the sense of history I feel when I look at the old-fashioned prints. The sense of belonging in my home is already palpable, like it’s been around for 10 years, and not just a month. And I haven’t even bound this guy! Binding, I’m afraid, will have to be put off until the weather cools. Or until I can’t wait any longer. So either autumn, or, like, tonight.

From Summer Breeze - which I had to finish first, or risk working *gasp* out of season - I moved on to playing around with some of my new fabrics. I have a TON of fabric right now, and while I’d love to get in on the “destash” movement everyone is talking about, I paid for this, and, darn it all, I’m gonna make product with it. I decided to put together a couple of simple smaller quilts, which, at about 42 inches square, actually make a fairly handy picnic blanket. We’ve been taking this throw to the park and beach, and it’s perfect for two.

I have ideas for a veritable plethora of these in mind. They are simple to sew, which means I can enlist the elves to help me make some for Christmas gifts, and they aren’t the yardage piglets that a lot of quilts are, which means I can incorporate lots of fun things from my stash without buying anything beyond batting. (And maybe some binding fabric, because I’m so picky about scale, and color, and making a nice, neat frame for the whole thing….)

But for now, I have two tops. Saturday’s:

(Why, oh why, did I fold it before taking a pic??? Close-up of fabrics here.)

and Sunday’s:

(Notice that the carpet is absolutely filthy with scraps and thread ends. Mark of a weekend well spent.)

Being on the roll that I was, I seriously considered putting together another top on Monday, to make it a long weekend trifecta. Good idea, but I think I’ll save it for another long weekend. (Or even do two a weekend till my head explodes!) But I had an itch to do some machine quilting, preferably on a quilt I was free to completely wreck. My machine quilting can use a little practice. And so I practiced.

I really practiced quite a lot.

This is yet another summery quilt that I just wanted to be done with. I made the top in about an hour in something like the summer of ‘05, and it’s amazing how letting a project languish like that just knocks it right off your to-do list.

Until, suddenly, you’re sending your husband to the hardware store for the widest roll of masking tape they have, because you cannot possibly put off the basting for the ten minutes it will take to walk to Ace yourself.

Good times.

Good, good times.

Who’s seen the Bird Boxes Quilt by Kaffe Fassett?

What a fun way for an unapologetic square-user like me to do her thang. I really like this one.

This, too. It has a nice vintage feel, with all that white.

I’m sure the many hundreds of 2-inch squares would be no small PITA. Could I cheat a bit by sashing with a bright floral?

And why am I even entertaining this idea? So many other projects to work on….

Or, rather, tie. If I could bind a quilt with a bit of yarn, I would have a lot more time on my hands. Or a lot more quilts!

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Hambone and me. Nothing worth talking about, but if you’ve ever been in that unique, particularly married situation when both the Mister and the Missus have had a string of bad days at work, you’ll understand my current desire to work on something soul-satisfying.

And so I’m determined to tie my Summer Breeze Quilt this week.

I was actually determined to tie it Monday or Tuesday, but, guess what I’m learning? It takes some time to tie a quilt!

First, there’s the marking:

Oh, marking. I guess we’ll have to add you to the list of things that are not difficult, but I still don’t want to have to do.

Then, the tying.

Let’s add the tying to the list of things that are difficult, but only because I have a cat.

All told, marking and tying a row - of which I need maybe 8 - is taking about 20-25 minutes each. No big deal, although I do have to spend that time on my hands and needs. (Soul-satisfying, back-tiring work, this.) So, all told, it’s faster than hand-quilting, and doable in a couple of evenings, if I hadn’t been going out a lot, which I have.

On the bright side, the project comes from Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts, which has great tips for tying. For my first effort, it’s been longer and a bit more physically taxing than I’d have guests, but it’s happening.

Maybe I should also mention that I made the quilt much larger than the instructions suggested? But more on that later - I have some loose ends, still.

Way, way behind in the stat quilt-along. Don’t even know when I made this block, actually, just that I made it imperfectly, and needed to fix it. I found it on my camera, and decided to plaster it up here, as a little reminder to myself, to keep at it, and keep at it, and keep at it till it’s done.

When we have to work on a project in a short amount of time, or if it’s a special gift for family, everyone needs to help out.

So Gus sews:

Hatbox watches….

and tells me all about what he’s doing wrong!

When we finish the top,

Jenn bastes,

Gus bastes,

and Hatbox tells us we are doing it wrong!

A vintage sheet for the back, I think.

Do I encourage bad behavior in Hatbox by taking pictures of all her antics? I’m just looking through some photos of the past 6 or 8 months, and seeing a lot of shocking behavior:

She’s moving quickly here, because she knows she’s not supposed to be on the mantle, chomping away at the flowers.

These are earrings, on a card. She got hold of them somehow, and started carrying them around in her mouth for like, three days straight. This seemed bad, but I thought it was cute, so I let it go. Bad Cat Mom!

Here is Hatbox, making a bed out of an application to submit a piece to an art show. It was accepted; no thanks to little miss.

At least, this time, she had the decency to pose….

Now with handmade pillowcases!

Goodnight!

By Amanda Jean. Don’t you just want to flop onto it, and stay there forever?

To be fair, I’ve been wanting one since Amanda Jean pointed to an earlier, pinker version, and while I love pink to death, seeing the vintage sheet pieces next to another color only makes me covet it more.

Like all things we really want, this one is ever-so-slightly out of my reach. I’ve been collecting vintage sheets to use as quilt backings for a little while, so using the leftovers in patchwork is certainly in my future. But waiting till I have the scraps? Torture. Waiting to amass a big enough stack? Not to mention a well-coordinated stack? Expensive torture.

This seems to be a real theme for me this week - lots of ideas, but not the fabric to execute them. I’ve been dreaming of putting together a Jacob’s Ladder in bright greens and yellows, but all my muslin’s earmarked, so I’m waiting on a shipment. I noticed a group of fabrics I absolutely MUST turn into the Summer Breeze Quilt from Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts, but not until I have some brown houndstooth to tie it all together.

(Thankfully, Helen’s got some, so it’s just a matter of picking that up. Still, waiting is waiting. Harumph.)

All this seems to suggest that I haven’t been working on much. Not so. But it’s so much more fun to write about what I’m dreaming about doing, as opposed to what I’m actually doing….

We’re trying to do for handbags what Purl did for Liberty prints stretched across embroidery hoops.

Some of these have sold already, so it’s been a pretty successful experiment!