170 year old UFO Projects

 Last week, when I offered my new River View quilt kits, much to my surprise, I sold out of them in one day.  Many thanks to those who bought one.  Since then, I have received requests to make more, and I now have a few more to offer.  Click here to order a River View kit.  These will be the last kits available as I cleaned Marcus out of some key fabrics used in the quilt.

Click here to order the River View pattern.

Last week, I went to New England on a vintage fabric search, scouring every nook and cranny I could for these precious pieces of the past.  I came across these rudimentary looking zip bags.....

...filled with surprises from the 19th century.

One bag had dozens and dozens of cut up diamonds, all of 19th century fabrics.  There are many repeats and some rather plain looking prints, but it also contained many splendid treasures!  

Like the brown and red print in the photo above.

To know me is to know I adore make-do fabrics and blocks.  There are many in this treasure bag, but I thought I'd show you one up close so you can see the tiny stitches of two pieces of fabric sewn together (this is called a split seam.) This makes the fabric large enough to cut the diamond shape.  How frugal they were...waste not!

The other zip bag contains hundreds of one inch squares.  

Upon closer inspection, note the squares are paired with a light and dark print.....and, they have been tack-stitched together!  The quiltmaker paired the squares together for her blocks and put a few stitched in them so they wouldn't separate!  My goodness, it took a lot of time to scissor cut them and tack stitch them together.

I (unprofessionally) date the fabrics in both bags to circa 1850.  That makes them 170 year old unfinished projects!  We, as  quilters then and now, through all of these passing years, are ever hopeful we will complete all of our projects.  We cut them and prep them for the day when we will work on them.  It's so heartwarming to me that I have so much in common with my quilting ancestors.  And, I am so often reminded to make-do as they did.

My trip for seeking out 'new' vintage fabric was quite successful.  New England is the best place to hunt for vintage textiles, not to mention lots of other great stuff to do.  

I'll share more of my New England trip in my next post.  Now that I'm back home, I'm back to work on fun, new things for our piecing pleasure.

Keep your needle busy and your heart content.  Be well, my friends.