An Oldie But Beauty

Three and a half motifs left to go on the Double Irish Chain quilt, and then I can press and attach the binding... and wait until my nails grow out and my fingertips heal up a bit before sewing the binding down to the back.  I have soft fingernails that I really can't grow past a quarter of an inch long before they rip.  As a couple did the other day, nearly down to the quick.  So I trimmed the rest to match, but it's coming back to bite me now.

Ah well.  It is what it is.

Since my executive dysfunction was kicking in yesterday (I need to vacuum the upstairs; I need to wash the guest room bedding; can I? nooooo~) I rerouted my daily tasks to something else: unpacking the boxes of clothing that've been hanging out in my bedroom closet for months now.  I went through two and a half boxes (the half being Wonderful Husband's; he gets to unpack his own clothes because I don't know where he'll want them) before I ran out of hangers.  Most of it is stuff I can't wear yet, summer-weight things.  But I found a few more pairs of jeans and my sweatshirts, so having those again will be nice.

I also opened a box I'd gotten a couple months ago: a quilt I bought in a Goodwill auction.  If there's one that interests me, I usually only bid the minimum.  This one, I bid a little bit more because I really wanted to take a pattern from it:

Isn't that cool?  Despite the machine quilting, I'm pretty sure it's hand-sewn.  The pieces are... not uniform, which will make pattern-taking interesting.  And I'm fairly sure it's set into the background, not appliqued on top of it.  This pattern is probably somewhere in Barbara Brackman's books but I don't have access to them at the moment, so I'm calling it the Circle Star quilt.

Most of the blocks are in pretty good condition for a quilt that (judging by some of the fabrics) probably dates to the 1930s.  The outer border, and this one block, are, however, shreddy:

Even that's a bit useful, however.  For instance, I now know that the interior is a flannel sheet, not batting.  I'll need to look at this section more closely later to tease out more details.  For now, however, I leave you with this sweet probably incidentally Christmas colored block:

Isn't that just so pretty?