Quilt Reveal: Oak Leaf and Reel

 

 

Hello and welcome to my blog! Today, I am participating in the Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop hosted by Beaquilter.  This is my third year participating in this blog hop, and I have enjoyed it each year.

In 2019, I dusted off a fairly new book, Cultural Fusion, and added a border to an existing quilt. I haven't quilted that quilt yet.

Last year, 2020, I made a Patchwork Envelope. I still haven't added the embellishments I am planning for that quilt. In that post, I showed you my oldest book, The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America, from 1935, but I didn't use it.

This year, I decided to dust off that old book and see what  I could make from that book. There lots of great choices. My favorites were pieced, but I don't have a lot of time, and thought a quick one block applique quilt would be a good choice. It could double as my small quilt of the month. I looked for a block with a relatively small number of pieces and chose the oak leaf and reel block.

The book doesn't have patterns, so I had to dust off another book, Folk Art Quilts, to get the pattern. You can see that book at the top of the post. I am expecting to get extra credit for dusting off two books for one quilt.

 

My fabric choices are shown in the first picture of this blog post. Even though it is winter and there was lots of snow on the ground, I chose an orange for the oak leaves. I chose the blues for the background to give it a modern twist. Then when I was cutting the fabric, I decided to give it another twist, and use the orange as the background and a blue for the leaves. Then I thought of using white as a background with the blue leaves. That would be the ultimate minimal modern quilt. Although I like them, I have a hard time making minimal quilts. I keep wanting to add more. So I decided against the white, and to leave the blue leaves on the orange background.

Well, it is nice, but boring.  I initially thought about adding a border. But adding a border would involve piecing, since I'd already cut the applique pieces so they would fit the fat quarter background.  It wouldn't be just four pieces to add to the border. I would have to piece the pieces to make them long enough and I'd already decided that this quilt would be applique instead of piecing.

I went to the Cave of Wonders to see what would help, and the genie threw some pieces at me that had been in the Maximum Minimal quilt. That woke up the Maximalist in me, and every day, as I walked by the table, I would add, remove, or move pieces on this piece. I didn't take pictures on this part of the process. This process took about two weeks and I have a lot of little bits that can be used on another quilt.

Then I looked at the calendar and decided I had to be done, so I used a glue stick to hold all of the pieces down.

With all these little curvy pieces, I knew that I had to free motion quilt this. The quilting holds down the applique. I haven't done any free motion quilting since my machine broke. I think it was the darning foot that broke it. It came in a kit with lots of different sewing feet and it was sturdily made but didn't have any give.  I have one that does have give and used it.  Free motion quilting is my favorite part of quilting. The only reason I have quilts that need to be quilted is that basting is my least favorite part of quilting and it has to be done first. 

I chose the dark teal for the binding and cut the pieces and sewed them together. But before I added them to the quilt, I changed my mind and decided to use the fabric that was used for the center flower.

I knew that it would be dark by the time I hand stitched this down, so I took a quick photo to prove that I had stitched the binding on the quilt.

And here is proof that I am hand stitching the binding down. I am scheduling this posting for early Monday morning, which means I can't show you a good reveal photo.

I took this photo before binding because I knew it would be the best lighting I would be able to get today.  I will replace this one with one of the bound quilt when I get a chance to get an image, so you may want to come back to see a grand reveal. This is my third year for the Dust Off An Old Book Blog Hop and my first year having a finished quilt. 

[Edited to add] Here is a quick shot I got before the wind blew the quilt away. I was able to catch it while it was still on the porch, but I will try for a better photo later. Maybe in the summer. This photo shows the colors pretty well. I've made several quilts lately with a yellow background. Each quilt has a different background and each one moved closer and closer to orange. This one definitely hopped the line to orange.

 

Thank you for visiting me during the Dust Off An Old Book Blog Hop. Thank you to Beaquilter for hosting this. Be sure to visit the other bloggers who are also participating in this hop.

Monday 3/1

Words and Stitches  

 Samelia’s Mum

High Road Quilter (that's me)

Tuesday 3/2

  Karin’s Crazy World

Lemon Tree Snippets  

 Anjaquilts

Wednesday 3/3

Beaquilter

   Cynthia’s Creating Ark

  A Quilting Readers Garden

Thursday 3/4

Kathy’s Kwilts and More       

Quilting Patchwork Applique

 The Darling Dogwood

 Creatin' in the Sticks

Friday 3/5

Beaquilter (the hostess)

Quilting at the farm  

 Kathleen McMusing

 

Also linked with:

Monday Making

My Quilting Week

 

 

I've made a lot of progress this week, fifteen minutes at a time. The Dust off An Old Book Blog hop is happening again this year, and I have signed up. This year, I decided to dust off my oldest quilt book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America.  There are plenty of quilts I want to make in this book, but since I have limited time, I want to make a one block quilt, and decided that applique would be easier.

I chose a design, and had to dust off another book to get the pattern. The Folk Art Quilts book has the pattern. Luckily it only took one false attempt to find it. I should get extra credit for dusting off two old books.

The bulk of my time on this quilt has been spent in thinking and rethinking the fabric selection. I am using the oak leaf and reel pattern. I was going to use the yellow/orange for the leaves and use the blue for the background. I then decided to reverse it and make the leaves in blue and use the orange for the background. Then I thought about making it more modern with blue leaves on a white background. Then I saw the blue leaves sitting on the orange background with the sun streaming on it, and right now I am going back to that choice. I can choose my own definition of modern.

I decided not to participate in this week's Project Quilting challenge. I needed to choose between the snails trail challenge and the old book because I don't think I could get both of them done, and chose the old book which isn't due until March.

I don't know if you noticed that the books and fabric were sitting on the shirts quilt. I hand stitched the batting on the quilt and pressed the extra row and the backing piece. Now I am making sure the sandwich is flat. I have been smoothing it, pinning it. Then turning it over to make sure the other side is smooth, fixing anything, and then turning it over again., It is working out fine, but when you work on it 15 minutes at a time, and work on other projects too, it looks like slow progress.

The picture makes it look lumpier than it is, but I do want to do some more smoothing before I start quilting it.

Last but not least, I made some more stitcheries. I just need to trim these, add the backing and stitch around the edges. I find that the outline stitching works best as a group, assembly style, and keeping them together keeps them from getting lost. The hardest part about making these is to remember to transfer the design to the right side of the fabric and not the wrong side.

2021:  Weeks 8 of 15 Minutes to Stitch

 

I was able to find the spot in the fence where the cats were entering my yard and block it, so now I can feed the birds again without endangering them. With all the snow we've had, they were very hungry.

My quilting time has diminished this week, but I did manage to spread it out with three different projects as I showed you already.

15 minute days this week --7 out of 7

15 minute days this year -- 52 out of 52 days

Success rate  = 100%

 

Linked with:

15 Minutes to Stitch