Progress on the embroidered mystery quilt

I've made some progress on the embroidered mystery quilt. I finished sewing all the setting squares and put them up with the embroidered squares on my - rather clever I think - make shift design wall...I don't know what happened to the flannel I used to use (I think I cut it up for something) so I took a twin sized flannel flat sheet, folded it in half wrong side out and taped it to the wall. 

When I designed the mystery quilt, it was with this layout.

If you squint, can you see the stars? It was a great layout for a mystery quilt with the surprise secondary pattern and the Redwork club participants really liked how their quilts came out. I didn't finish mine because that was just when I got sick with the CMV virus...in fact, I missed the last session and had to e-mail Barbie the layout.

Well, I just couldn't resist moving squares around...

and I've decided that I'm actually going to use this layout instead. (Don't tell on me! :)

An embroidery needlecase or Huswif

No, this isn't a little purse...its a huswif. It's perfect for embroidery with two pockets, one for floss and the other is large enough for a 6" x 6" square ruler (perfect for helping center designs for transfer) plus a little scissor pocket and a needle holder-both from felt. The design of the case is from Kaaren at The Painted Quilt-you can find it out here. (BTW, she's having a Go Giveaway that just started today!)

I changed the embroidery designs inside...(and I made it an inch wider at 8")

I went for a vintage sewing theme...I do love this little kitty...
and how could I not use this little girl doing embroidery!!!
I finally have something a lot nicer than a zip lock bag to keep my embroidery floss in while I'm working! :) I've always wanted a huswuf-makes me feel like I'm linked to a long line of sewers!

I'm linking to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry. Stop by and see this week's wonderful finishes.

Vintage Thursday Thingie: Embroidered Bonnet Girl Coverlet

I'm reposting this from September 2009-Bonnet Girls are just grown up Sunbonnet Sues. I'm sure CC would have liked this coverlet.

I purchased this outline embroidered Bonnet Girl summer coverlet on E-bay a few years ago…yes, it was a bargain-it cost me all of $10.00! I’m not sure when its from but I would guess the 1960s, mainly because of the brown fabric…course the orange could mean the 1970s. Its technically not a quilt as there is no batting-a summer coverlet.

Bonnet Girl quilts became very popular in the 1920s and have lots of different names...there's Umbrella Girl (my girl has both an umbrella and a bonnet!), Southern Belle , and Crinoline Lady !

I wish I could have photographed it better but here's a close-up of one of the blocks from the center row. The center row of blocks are the lightest and were done with orange to yellow graduated floss. This row also shows the most wear and there is even one block with half the umbrella/parasol missing.

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The outer rows are partially done with the graduated floss and then finished with brown.

( Wondering about what's peaking through? I'll get to that soon.)

This coverlet is tied-another one of the reasons that I love owning it! The ties were done with 100% wool so when the "quilt" was washed the yarn shrank up and formed these balls. The only quilty memory I have from childhood is sleeping at my Aunt Anne's and she had covers with these wonderful little balls on them!

This entire coverlet is made from sugar sacks! She used the best parts-with no printing-for the front.

The back is made up with sugar sacks turned so that the writing is inside the coverlet but it is still noticeable. Since there is no batting, it is quite easy to read. All of the sacks were 10 lbs. and were from two companies: The Amalgamated Sugar Company and the Utah Idaho Company.

With a little time spent with Google I discovered some fascinating things. These were both sugar beet companies. The Ogden, Utah plant was founded in 1898 and merged with other plants to become the Amalgamated Sugar Co. in 1915. A sugar beet processing plant was built in Garland in 1903 by the LDS Church and was merged with others from Idaho to form the Utah Idaho Sugar Company in 1907.

One of the bags says Chinook, Montana…a little research here informed me that there had been a large sugar beet processing plant serving the area, a large sugar beet growing center until “business collapsed among manipulations of the commodities market back in the early 1950’s”!
You can read here about sugar hoarding (over 5 million pounds!) in this NY Times article from 1919… I’m telling you the sugar business was not sweet!

I really love the back of this quilt-I love these sugar sacks! I love that they say “ A Product of American Farms” and “Pure Granulated” and “Fine Granulated Table and Preserving Sugar”.

I love this quilt…I love the woman who made it! She took sugar sacks and a bit of floss and made a summer spread-I like to think- to dress up her daughter’s bedroom.

I'm linking to VTT at Coloradolady...be sure to stop by and see all the wonderful vintage treasures.

Embroidered hearts quilt top

The embroidered hearts baby quilt top is finished!I had to change the fabrics from my first idea and so I used this sweet pink check to go with the striped pink fabric. I'm really happy with the mix of a stripe, check and floral.

This is the sixth heart...once again, these are the true colors.
I had done several hearts when I decided that I wanted to use a Disappearing 9 Patch for the setting...I liked the idea that I would get an asymmetrical quilt. I wanted all of the embroidered blocks in the left corner so I had to turn the blocks around to get what I wanted. Definitely easier to decide to use a D9P before doing the embroidery-you can see that I used a plain white square in one corner.... I could turn the block how I wanted it and then mark the embroidery.
Here's that block-just starting the embroidery with the block all sewn.
I used 3 D9P blocks-one with white squares in each corner, one with pink check and one with white squares (embroidered) in two corners and pink check in the other corners...really an easy peasy way to sew the blocks!

I hope this counts as my first quilt for the Striped Quilt Challenge at Love Laugh Quilt-it is only one striped fabric but I still had to think about how I wanted the stripe going...clearly I chose that it always went one way.

I'm linking to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry and Sew and Tell at Amylouwho. Stop by and see all the wonderful finishes.

More embroidered hearts

I've finished 3 more embroidered hearts...I really like this one with the sunflowers...but I think this one is my favorite! It is so sweet with the little light pink x's in the background.
This one has a really pretty lace like flouncy border.
All of these hearts are from a 2007 free BOM from Crabapple Hills Studio. There are actually 11 designs available (May doesn't seem to work-its empty). I'm planning on using 6.

I've had to rework the fabrics I'll be using...the cute 30s kids fabrics are not working out. I wanted to alternate the embroidered hearts with cut-outs from the kids fabrics but the size of the repeats just didn't work out...next baby quilt I'll start with the kids fabrics and plan from the repeat.

Embroidered hearts

I'm working on some sweet heart embroideries...here are two of them. The colors in the top are true-the hearts are done in hot pink, not red like it looks in the second photo.I've used outline stitch in the hearts and stems and backstitch for the flowers and the ribbon plus French knots, Lazy Daisy and straight stitches. I'm doing these for a baby quilt and love the idea of adding the baby's name in the ribbon.
I have two more hearts almost finished. These are the fabrics I'm thinking of using with the embroideries but I'll have to see if I like the repro 30s kiddy figurine fabrics once I start sewing things together.
I finished the piano border for the batik star quilt but I'm not sure about the corner squares so I'm still working on it.

Tuesday's Tomes: Free Air by Sinclair Lewis Plus iron-on transfer patterns of vintage cars

Sinclair Lewis wrote many books besides Babbitt (which I could never get through) and Main Street (which I love) though these are his most famous. Not to be missed is what may well be the very first road story, Free Air, written in 1919-long before Jack Kerouk’s famous road book.

“When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire fancied she was piloting a drowned car…She was excited and thoroughly miserable....But the Gomez-Dep roadster had seventy horsepower, and sang songs. Since she had left Minneapolis, nothing had passed her. Back yonder a truck had tried to crowd her, and she had dropped into a ditch, climbed a bank, and returned to the road, and after that the truck was not.”

Are you laughing yet? Thus opens this wonderful novel by Mr. Lewis. Our heroine, Miss Claire Boltwood of Brooklyn, is driving her father from Minneapolis to Seattle-the idea being that he needs a rest for his nerves! Along the way she and her father meet Milt Daggett (and his cat!), he helps them out of some mud, and soon becomes their guardian angel…driving just a bit behind them so that he can help out the pretty Miss Boltwood and her father in whatever trouble comes…and trouble does come.

Yes, Milt is our hero but there is also Jeff, Claire’s special friend from New York and you can see where this is going ,can’t you?

A thoroughly enjoyable tale and heartily recommended, delightfully read by Hollis Hanover.

You can download this free audiobook here or download the free e-book here ( then just right click and save as to keep download). Sorry, no free Kindle format download available . You can download it for $2.99 from Amazon here.

Just for fun, I’m adding some iron-on transfer embroidery patterns of vintage cars…hmmm, not sure there’s a Gomez Dep but will a Model T do for a Tin Bug?

1909 Ford Model T ....yes, I think a ten year old Model T suits the Tin Bug well.

I had a little more trouble finding something for the Gomez-Dep, a car totally from Mr. Lewis' imagination. Here's a 1907 Rolls Royce...
But in my imagination, this comes closer...though its many years in the future...a 1931 Chrysler Imperial.
BTW, I actually embroidered the Model T for an all embroidered summer coverlet.

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More embroidered beauties from Munich

I wanted to share some more of the wonderful things I saw in Munich (Picasa is very bossy and would only let me upload 4 pictures! in my last post.)

This is a corner of the Courtly Love embroidery showing a kneeling woman. The embroidery was done in silk and gold threads…I’m not sure what the red background was-it may have been paint!

IThis is from a different embroidery-isn’t it a wonderful face!

Does this make you think of an applique quilt?...its a wood inlay table!

All in all, we’re having a wonderful visit so far-days visiting museums and evenings talking and eating with friends! And enjoying the beautiful fall foliage!

Report from Germany: Frankfurt, Munich and an antique embroidery

You know how I and many other quilters like to make reproduction quilts…well in Germany, they have reproduction buildings!

On this major-square in Frankfurt, these half timbered buildings have been rebuilt to replace the buildings destroyed in WWII-using pre-war photos to exactly reproduce the buildings.

In Munich, we went to the Residence-also a reproduction building!The Residence was the palace home of the Dukes of Bavaria. They were later called the Electors and then the Kings of Bavaria. They were called the Electors as they were part of the select 7 who elected the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.Did you know that the Holy Romany Empire continued until the 18^th century? I didn’t-I thought it ended with the Fall of Constantinople in the 15^th century-apparently not. Only the Eastern Holy Roman Empire ended then the Western continued until Napolean. (I’m learning quite a lot of history on this trip…I really only know American and British history!)

This is a photo of the building from one of the interior courtyards-it is trompe l’oeil–click on the photo and you will see that all of the shadows recreating the look of a stone exterior are painted on a simple stucco exterior.

The Residence is chock full of wonderful reproduction rooms…rooms with Rococo wall and ceiling plasterwork, rooms with painted wooden ceilings and rooms with brocaded walls…I think I am more impressed that this is reproduction work being done today than if these were 17-18^th century rooms! What a wonderful job! Unfortunately, no flash was allowed and none of my photos came out.

The Residence also has a wonderful Treasury full of the crowns and jewels of the Bavarian Dukes/Electors/Kings. From the 13^th century, there is a wonderful crown and a jeweled necklace, both with semi-precious stones the size of eggs!

We also went to the Bavarian National Museum-this building is partially original and partially reconstructed-and used to house the King’s wonderful collections-sort of an overflow repository for the treasures he just didn’t have room for in the Residence! There’s a whole silver state dinner service including plates, servers and silverware…made me feel better-it, like my silver, needs polishing!, a wonderful display of Meissen porcelain figurines-showing both painted and white (pre over painting) examples of the same figurines!, and down in the basement wonderful rooms filled with painted Bavarian furniture (a complete bedroom set for one) and local redware pottery that looks so like the painted furniture and Redware from Pennsylvania!

Some wonderful embroidery pieces-this is one of two couples that are the center design of this “courtly love” 14-15^th century Bavarian embroidery.

It was very dark in this room and I, of course, didn’t use a flash-wow! the wonders of digital manipulation!)