Nancy's Quilt, Finished

I wrote out the label yesterday morning, stitched it on by hand, tossed the quilt through washer and dryer (I'm quite pleased that there was little color bleeding onto the Color Catchers), and delivered it to my aunt.  So here is the finished project!

Laid out here atop my and Wonderful Husband's bed, the finished size is 74" x 88".  This entire quilt was made from my stash.  The only thing I purchased to make it was a spool of variegated blue thread, specifically to quilt the blue string blocks.

My aunt approached me last year with a set of six dishtowels, embroidered by her great-grandmother circa 1957 (for her parents' wedding) and asked me if I could make a quilt around them.  I pulled out a pad of paper and worked out a sketch while we talked over possibilities.  After a good soak in Oxiclean powder to remove the age stains, and a run through the washer/dryer, I ended up cutting 12" (finished) squares from the dishtowels, centering the embroideries as best I could.  I bordered those each with a 1" gold frame (which is actually harvest fabric... pumpkins, cornucopias, etc.... but cut this narrow, you can't really tell).

Next I sewed lots and lots (50) of Bonnie Hunter-style 7" diagonal string blocks.  My aunt said her mother's favorite colors were blue and green, so I worked my way through all my blue strings.  Then I pulled out all the blue scraps in my hatbox of scraps, and my bins of 1 1/2" and 2" strips.  I deliberately tossed in everything, trying to get color and contrast, value and variety (a Bonnie-ism!) in each block.  I especially made myself use up bits of fabric I was saving "for a special occasion."  When my grandmother died, we found some very nice clothing in her drawers, never worn, because it was for a special occasion.  I'm not going to hold out on myself like that!  I arranged them so the strings made zigzags, trying to make sure I didn't have the same fabric touching itself anywhere (I failed in two spots) and then outside of that all I put a 2" frame of the gold.

I had originally planned to use the green here as the outer border, but I didn't have enough of it for border, backing, and binding.  So I dug through my stash and found this vintage (36" wide) primarily blue and green print, which Wonderful Husband agreed was just right for the 7" border.  As it's directional, I made sure to cut the side borders along the length and the top and bottom borders along the width, so it keeps its orientation.  I sewed the binding down by hand - usually I stitch it by machine on both sides, but it looks a little nicer doing it this way.  You can see here that I quilted a vine with heart leaves into the outer border.  I used a green silk thread I had for both sides in the border.  For the string blocks, I used a variegated blue (my only purchase for this quilt) and just swooped back and forth across the strings.  For the gold frames, I used my walking foot and gold thread in the top - one line in the 1" frames, two in the 2" frame.

Here you can see the texture on the back.

For the embroidered blocks, I did use white thread in the bobbin as well as on the top.  I didn't want any dark thread shadowing on the white cloth.  And I didn't quilt on top of the embroideries, only around them.  The cotton batting I used allows for up to 8" between lines of quilting, so it should be fine.

I am very pleased with this quilt, and my aunt is as well.  It will be given to her mother next Sunday.  I mentioned that, if I was keeping it, this would be my entry in the OC Fair this year.  My aunt seems to think entering it in the fair anyway wouldn't be a problem.  Hmm.  I must think on that....