Sunrise Quilt Studio

This quilt started as 9 machine pieced basket quilts dated from the 1920s. I purchased the blocks from an antique store. I put them together with some white cotton fabric as alternate blocks, and black on red fabric for the border. The blocks are machine pieced and not done with precision. Many of the points were cut off before I squared up the blocks. The blocks were also various sizes from 8" to 9" and not many were square. I pieced the top using my vintage Singer 15-91. The machine sewed beautifully, but, the top turned out to be out of square. So I measured the blocks from corner to corner instead of side to side and found 2 blocks to switch around to make the rows more consistent in length. That squared up the quilt. So, lesson learned - measure the top through the middle and the edges to see if it is truly square. Also measure the blocks on the edges as well as through the middle both ways to see if they are completely square. You can view the video I made the o...

I finished quilting the 1930's Bethlehem Star quilt last week, and am very happy with the way it turned out. The quilt is 65 x 65 inches square. The outer border is quilted with piano keys and the inner border with a freehand flower. I used an 80/20 batting and 100% cotton thread from Signature in white. The background is quilted in a whimsical feather design using a mix of formal feathers and a feather with a curl. The feathers change direction within the large block which adds a lot of movement to the quilting. I chose to quilt the section where 4 blocks come together and treat it like I would an alternate block. The stars are quilted with a continuous curve design. Below is a video I posted on YouTube about the quilting.

The quilt above is made from turn of the century quilt blocks that belong to my mother-in-law and were made by her grandmother. She had asked me some time ago to put them into a quilt for her, but I couldn't find fabrics that would complement the blocks until just recently.  The border, sashing and cornerstones are reproduction fabrics from Moda. The block above is called Four Crowns. This one is made from cotton fabrics. However, the other blocks with this pattern are made from flannel as well as cotton. The pinwheel block above is a 13 inch block. The other blocks were 15 inches. So to make up the difference, I added a 1 inch border using the blue reproduction fabric to make it the same size as the other blocks. Most of the quilting is all straight line quilting expect for these blocks. I used 2 of my circle rulers to make the design in the pinwheel. This Virginia Reel block was quilted using 1/4 inch outline quilting to emphasize movement in this block....

The quilting is complete on the hexagon quilt! I did more research on this pattern and found that it is a "Spiderweb" block. The fabrics are 1930s for the most part. I can't date the solid blue star point fabric and a few of the other fabrics in the quilt, but for the most part they are 1930s. I decided on an egg and dart quilting design for the spider webs with a flower in the center - then a continuous curve design for the star points. My main goal was to find a design that emphasized the spiderweb design and that the star point design be symmetrical. A directional design in the star points would have caused a lot of extra work to get them to look right since they are connecting 3 different spiderweb blocks together. Here is a video of the quilting:

We took last Saturday off from working around the house to visit an antique mall that we hadn't been to before. I came home with this quilt top! Dating it isn't straight forward, but it does have a lot of 1930's fabrics in it, and possibly some 1920's. The solid blue triangles I am not able to date. The quilt is hand pieced and doesn't use a foundation fabric. Luckily for me it is fairly square. I currently have this top on my quilting machine waiting to be quilted. Hopefully I will get to it later next week when I'm over the worst of this cold. I posted a You Tube video of some designs I tried out using a piece of tablecloth plastic as an overlay on the top and a dry erase marker. You can view the video below.

This 1930's Dresden Plate quilt is a re-work. I purchased the quilt at an antique shop a year or so ago. It was tied in the center of the plates with crochet cotton, and machine stitched in the ditch around the blocks. The binding was frayed and the backing was full of holes. So I took it apart, gave it a new backing and quilted it using an 80/20 batting. The plates are quite faded, and it was obviously used. As I worked with this quilt I realized that the sashing was not 100% cotton fabric - it is a poly-cotton blend. It is possible that this isn't the first time this quilt has been reworked. Perhaps the blocks were sewn into a different setting and someone took it apart and added the sashing. Or perhaps the blocks were stored away for years and taken out and set in with the poly-cotton sashing back in the 60's or 70's or 80's. It would be interesting to know the true story of this quilt. The quilting I did leans towards traditional quilting with ...