Friday, December 9, 2022

Passacaglia Quilt Finished and a New Beginning for 1930's Farmer's Wife Blocks


Well, I finally finished the Passacaglia quilt!  I did some things differently from the original.  I didn't cut off parts of the quilt just to square it up like the book had you do.  Why do all that piecing just to discard it?  I appliqued it down to a background and did cut off the point of the stars as there was just no way to easily applique those tiny ends down so I just tucked them under.  I then cut away all the background behind the main part of the quilt.  This background was had dyed just for this.  At first I was going to do yellow but didn't care for how it looked so overdyed the yellow with blue to get this very dark green/blue which kind of goes into the background!  It measures 60 across by 65 down.  

The machine quilting was all freehand.  I chose to go with the machine quilting using matching thread for the most part as I didn't want the quilting to detract.  It is mostly in the "ditch".  It is not a quilt you should look at from a foot away but 3 feet away it isn't bad!  The pieces were so tiny, I have no idea how anyone could contemplate hand quilting it but I know a lot have!  Most of the centers of the circles were "fussy-cut" for my usual kaleidoscopic effect.  My daughter indicated she wanted to hang it on her high wall but don't know whether she realizes the size.  I won't be insulted if she changes her mind!

As we had an "Open Sew" day at Guild, I decided to work on the blocks from the 1930's Farmer's Wife book.  These blocks are a LOT harder than the ones in the 1920's book, many of which had over 50 pieces each!!  Some of these blocks are on an 8 x 8 grid which means the individual pieces in the block finish to 3/4 inch sometimes!!  I was literally stumped on how to piece one today but have edited the pattern and think now I can do it -- it is on an 8 x 8 guild and involves partial seams!

You can see I have chosen a different palette for this one.  I am going with old faithful blues, greens and beige/whites with a touch of purple thrown in and maybe a little pale yellow at some point.


 

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