OMG January 2020
My One Monthly Goal (OMG) is to make a top from my vintage star blocks. You may recall that I had this project on my Finish-A-Long Q4 goals starting in October.
You may also recall that I started to work on them and discovered that they smelled absolutely terrible when the iron hit them. So then I soaked them for weeks in Vintage Textile Soak, and then, later, in vinegar and water to totally kill the smell.
Then December happened and I had several large quilting jobs and I just didn't get back to working on the blocks. Well. The whole reason I wanted to work on this project right now is because there is a category in the IHQS show (that seems redundant, no?) this year for Found & Finished quilts. And I just received an email from IHQS reminding people that the entry deadline is February 10! Yikes! I need to get in gear.
Some history on the blocks: we purchased the star blocks along with some other quilting things from a neighbor's estate in the late 1990s. I'm assuming his wife made them, but I really have no way of knowing. I had always admired the colors in the blocks and wanted to do something with them. I just didn't realize how bad they would smell or that about half of the blocks need to be torn apart and restitched because there is excess fabric that results in a huge fold of fabric at the center seam.
So here I am with just over a month to get the top and the quilting done. The blocks all vary slightly in size and also in the degrees of the angles. I decided that the best way to approach this is to appliqué them down. I'm going to try Lori Holt's interfacing method and then tack them down by machine. I think I ended up with 17 usable blocks. (I know I ended up with three unusable because the black stuff on the back never came off and I don't know what it is. Sadly I never even removed the last three from the makeshift clothesline in the downstairs bathtub.) I will likely go with a three across, four down layout because I prefer oblong quilts to square quilts. And it's five less blocks to deal with.
It may take a small miracle to pull this off. Wish me luck for getting a finished top done by January 31.
Linking with Elm Street Quilts.
Love those stars!! I used a set of twelve vintage stars much like yours to create quilts for my three children a couple years ago -- I ended up taking the stars apart, pressing the scrappy diamonds and trimming them all to the same size so they were easier to add the background and would lay flat in the finished quilts -- extra work but worth it. Here's a link to them on my blog -- https://maryhueyquilts.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-christmas-quilts.html
ReplyDeleteThose are cool. Thanks for linking up with Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal and good luck with your project.
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