Maybe this is the year I'll do something with some of my quilt tops. These are old quilts that were never assembled and I've acquired them over the years. Finishing them would involve finding the right size batting for inside, finding suitable fabric for a backing, deciding whether to tie it with yarn or quilt it, do whichever, making a binding and applying it. Now I'm sorry I just wrote all that out because it sounds like a lot of work, and I'd be lucky to get one or two of these quilts done this year, at the rate I go on these things.


My mother thought the yellow triangles in this one were ugly, but I think they provide a spark of interest.



This is a crazy quilt made from the old flour sack fabric. Feed sacks were in their glory in the 1930's when farm and rural families were economically burdened. They fit the bill, thanks to some creative manufacturers, for clothing, towels, tablecloths and of course quilts. Anyone who frequents estate sales today can attest that in that era, nothing was wasted, because waste meant not making the mortgage payment, not putting supper on the table, or not buying new clothes.



With scores of prints to choose from, buying feed, flour and even seed was less a matter of choosing the right grain than choosing what print was needed to start or finish whatever sewing project was in the works.




This quilt made from shirt and dress fabric has a reasonably nice color arrangement that took some planning, but it's not so arresting as to be worth putting a lot of work into the quilting of it.





I bought this Tumbling Blocks top on Ebay, mostly finished. It isn't the most attractive rendition I've ever seen, although the workmanship is good. The fabrics are not all cotton, they are polyester blends, and the pieces are cut kind of large. It is the nearest to being done of all of them: I am at the point of tying it with yarn (it's not good enough for a lot of hand quilting). Mr. Troutbend likes the colors, so when it's done I'll give it to him.



This is a star quilt my mother started, and I have been working on for a couple of summers. Star quilts are more of a challenge to piece together than just squares and rectangles. When she was dying we had looked at some of her unfinished projects, and one night she said "Jane, (that's what they called me) don't try to finish that quilt." And of course I said okay, but privately figured I'd finish it if I wanted to. Then a couple days later she said "Go get that quilt. Now, look here. When you sew these star points you don't stitch all the way to the edge, you leave a seam allowance open so you can set the points." So she knew I might finish that quilt after all.

Twenty-four years later, though, I'm finding there is just barely enough of the fabrics to come up with a decent-sized top, and I have been keeping an eye out for some blue or red that would fit in so I could make some sashing between the star blocks and come out with a larger quilt, plus something that would make a good binding and the backing. But apparently the fashions in fabric colors have evolved away from these particular shades of maroon and Wedgewood blue from the 1960s (I had dresses made from these fabrics), so it's proving to be more of a challenge than expected. But don't you worry, I'll think of something.

One quilt pattern my mother always talked about making but never got around to is called Storm at Sea. This particular quilt picture I found on the Internet has some interesting elements: it is a scrap quilt, as opposed to be purpose-bought fabrics, and yet the blue and green colors perfectly enforce the idea of the sea, and the pattern and shading variations are subtle enough to maintain the overall pattern of the quilt. Good job, somebody!



It has a lot of movement in it, and even though there are no curved pieces there is the effect of curving.

Here is another color version of it so you can see the difference color selection can make.



This is a hard quilt pattern to make because there are many different shapes to cut out and sew together, and they are odd shapes that do not adapt easily to strip piecing or other fast assembly methods. This is why I have not tackled (as my mother would say) this project, and maybe I never will, but I enjoy thinking about it.