Wednesday, December 31, 2014

New "Old" Blocks


I bought some Pennsylvania Dutch quilt blocks, from a woman who dated them at about the late 1890's, early 1900's. They have that distinctive bright mustardy yellow with a tiny red print.  You don't see a lot of reproduction yellows as bright as these; I just love the bold colors (the yellow is the closest to real yellow in the 3rd photo down). I'm not sure what I will do with them at the moment, but just looking and admiring is fun!

Double pink, green and mustard yellow makes the block pop.


A nice rich red with the mustard yellow. Almost glows in the dark.
What I did not count on was some little mouse got to these blocks before me, and made a very pretty house from some of the red and yellow blocks!

Ms. mouse had good "taste" in fabric.

More mouse work.
 It will be easy to repair these blocks, but not so easy to find the right yellow. I have found a couple of reproductions that could work, but the hand of the new fabric is so thick and stiff compared to the older fabric that I don't want to go that route yet.

There are people who specialize in selling older fabrics, but I have found the yellow to be on the rare side, thus the price is high (50 dollars or more a yard, anyone?)  And they sell the fabric in small bits (i.e. 15 inches by 20) but 25 dollars for a small hunk of fabric? Yikes. I still hold out hope that I'll find a nice stash of a variety of mustard yellows and bright reds that someone will beg me to take off their hands. Hah.



Sunday, December 14, 2014

Christmas Card Production 2014



So, did you guess Christmas cards?

That's what the quilt block was for (and by the way, it was my husband's idea...I never would have picked an 8-pointed star as a "quick thing to throw together" to use to make cards! I had to sew it by hand, because I had to get the pieces to fit and did not have a pattern or template.  Back to Geometry 101.)

We have been making our own Christmas cards since the early 1980's (one year when my husband was swamped with work and had absolutely no free time to fit in Christmas card designing, I had to buy cards. They were cute cards, but I felt so guilty that I wrote a "sorry this is not a homemade card this year" inside. My friends thought that was just too funny.)

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Secret Projects


Working on a little something...can you guess?


Here's the front. It's about 11-inches square with the black border.

Fa la la la la, la la la la!