Vintage Blocks, Vintage Fabric

For those who are reading this who don't want to know the entire design and quilt making process just look at the pretty pictures and move on. 

A couple of years ago mom and I were at an antique show and found 25 or so vintage quilt blocks, probably from the 30s that she bought for my birthday. I love 30s fabric, it is so bright and cheery and innocent. 

I promptly placed the blocks on a shelf in my sewing room and didn't exactly forget about them, but didn't do anything with them either. When I pulled them out last fall I realized that there were 16 blocks in one pattern, Flying Dutchman, a flying geese pattern, and 8 star pattern blocks.  The star blocks were 1/2 inch smaller than the flying geese blocks and though hand pieced, they were quite poorly made with mismatched seams and points and large stitches that were starting to come undone. I did some repair work as I put the blocks together, but only enough to keep them from falling apart. 

I wanted to use all vintage fabrics to finish the quilt. Mom had been given a box of vintage fabric years ago when she was teaching at Mormom Handicraft. There were print scraps and some yardage and yards and yards of solid pastel fabrics. I wanted to used the solids for the sashings but wasn't too sure of the layout. As I was laying the blocks over the different colored solids I like the way they looked with different colored sashings. After deciding to place the blocks on point I was ready to sew. Until I decided I couldn't  live with the star blocks in the quilt. They were too small to fudge, so I made 9 flying geese blocks from Mom's vintage prints to replace them. The background fabric for the flying geese I made was a very light creammy yellow that perfectly matched the muslin the original quilter had  used that had yellowed with age. If you didn't know I made new blocks it is hard to tell which ones are the original, except mine are made a little better. 

A design wall is a wonderful thing. 

Figuring out how to do the angles in the sashing took a little thought, but well worth it I think. I had it machine quilted and am quite happy with the results. 

I decided to piece the back with the stars that I didn't use on the front. I found some orphan grandmother flower garden blocks in mom's block of vintage fabrics that I appliquéd onto the back as well.  In a way the back turned into a it's own separate modern quilt

Happily, I am even keeping this quilt for my self and not giving it away.