fabricologist

fabricologist

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Quilt Deconstruction (and I need a little help here)

So, where to begin...I started this quilt about 10 years ago. My oldest WIP. Back then, my fabric choices were different and I was hand quilting most of my quilts. Slow going, but who cared back then. I had built a quilting frame to be able to quilt large quilts. This quilt was big and was even so big it wouldn't fit the  frame. So I put most of it on the frame to quilt, and planned to do the other part afterwards and then join them together. Still with me?
 This is the quilt top, spread out on my bed after I picked out the hand quilting. It was about half done. It is eight pointed stars that are pieced and a heart/flower block that is appliqued. The denim part is from old jeans. The white fabric is pretty thin and I don't know what it is.
Here is the I need your help part. I think this is a pattern from a Quilters Newsletter Magazine. I know that I was working on this in 2005. I had to take the quilting frame down then, to make more room when my daughter moved back home. I knew it would be hard to get back around to finishing this, and I was right.

I have looked through old issues from early 2005, all of 2004 and 2003. I am missing a couple of issues. I cannot find this quilt in any of them. I have other years, further back, but I feel like this would be from the years I was looking through. I seldom went too far back in time for inspiration. Does anybody know what this quilt is called or where the pattern lives?

The edges are not finished on one side and I am not sure what to do. I am going to sew the two big pieces back together for sure. After that...I don't know.

So now, some more pictures of the deconstruction process:

                                                     before
                                          before
                   Some of my nice hand quilting stitches, right before I ripped them out.


 Tweezers make great thread grabbers. You can see my awful job of quilt marking. It probably won't come out after all these years, but I will wash it when I am done and we shall see.
 After thread removal, but before ironing it to smooth the fabric back out again. It worked.
 This is the fabric that was on the back. Judging from the look of it, I think it is an old white sheet.

 Lots of threads. And this was just the beginning of the process. Much fuller now.


So my plan is, if I can't find a picture of the finished quilt anywhere (I tried the internet) I will put it together at the best of my ability and quilt it. I plan to quilt it in a much more modern fashion. I am thinking straight lines, but we'll see.

You can see why I put off this daunting project for more than ten years now, can't you. But at least I am one step closer now. Can't wait to see if anyone knows what this quilt pattern is.
Talk to you soon.