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.

Ten Years of Quilter's Newsletter

Last March my daughter helped me clean up my sewing room and we put 10 years worth of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine in a box. Then, I let it sit. It sits there still today, and I wonder what to do with it.

 I bought a few issues and fell in love with the magazine in the late nineties. Then, I got so into quilting I treated myself to a subscription. I don't have subscriptions to anything any more. I had a subscription for ten years and I kept every issue to use as a reference.

 Now, I am trying to get rid of stuff I don't use. But I hate to just put all of these in the recycle bin. So what do you, my readers think I should do with them? My library doesn't take magazines like this. Does anybody want them? Or maybe just some of them? I will give them away but I can't afford to pay postage on them to mail them.

I am hoping someone wants to give them a good home. If not, recycle it is. I need the room.

This Qulter's Journey, part 3

The next step on my quilting journey was to build a quilting frame for hand quilting. In those days (early 90's) all the quilting magazines had advertisements for quilting frames. Machine quilting hadn't really taken off yet. Most home quilting was still done by hand.  I loved the idea of having a quilt on a frame where I could sit down and take a few stitches whenever I had time.

They were pretty expensive, upwards of $300. I found one that would sell you the plans to build a frame and they sent you the plans and hardware. You bought the wood and the metal roller bars at the hardware store. So we did. My hubby helped me build and assemble it.  I think I quilted two quilts on it, and had this one on the frame when I had to take it apart and store it.

 The applique sections were made of old denim jeans and reds and yellow quilting cottons. They were fused on and zigzagged around. I loved the idea of recycling the old jeans.

 The star blocks were pieced, mostly from scraps left from earlier projects. I still had a very romanticized view of what a quilt should be. Scrappy was it.

 The pattern is in an old issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. I have about 10 years worth, and haven't tried to find it yet.  I started hand quilting it in feathers  in all the white spaces.

 The whole thing is, I think queen size. It wouldn't all fit on the frame, so it is in two pieces. One big chunk and one smaller chunk.

 Here you can kind of see some of the quilting. My amateurish attempt at quilting feathers.

 I still love the look of this quilt and so much of the work is done on it, I know I should finish it. But I am stumped as to how. I already have an Irish Chain that I have been hand quilting on for about 5 years now and I just don't see this one happening.

If you have any ideas for me about how I can get this done, please, let me hear your ideas. For now, that is all from my quilting journey. I have lots more to say and show you. Talk to you soon.