Project Quilting Quarantine 3 - Vintage

And here we are. STILL under Safer At Home Orders due to Covid-19.  This has gone from being unbelievable to surreal to strangely normal.  Things are starting to "open up" again around the country, and even here in Wisconsin, where to official order to limit travel and social interactions is in place until May 26th, there are many people and places inching back toward business as usual.  It's so hard to know what to think about this.  All of this. Some say we have been under quarantine too long, and some say we still aren't safe.   But, that's a discussion for a blog post I won't write.

This post is about my entry for Project Quilting Quarantine Edition Challenge 3.  I'm pretty excited about this sweet little finish!  It is unlike anything I've ever entered into PQ, and likely ever will again!  It's a good thing that Trish suggested that rules in this "bonus" season were meant to be broken, because:  A: this isn't a quilt; B: while technically there are three layers I did not layer them and C:  I did no sewing on this unless you want to count some really wonky blanket stitching !

This week's theme - Vintage - pushed me to finally DO something a couple of treasures I've been keeping in a closet for far too long.  I bought a vintage quilt top at a flea market a few years ago for a few dollars.    I took the top along with me to the quilt show in Madison the fall after I bought it (I was attending a lecture about dating vintage quilts and the brochure invited attendees to bring along mystery tops to practice on!) and a quilt assessor there confirmed my suspicion that this was pieced sometime between 1920 and 1930.  I just love looking at it.  The top is made up of 4-patches that look to have been made of clothing.  There are seams running through a lot of the blocks and there's a wide variety of patterns and fabric types.  Some parts appear to have been hand pieced, but others are clearly machine pieced.  Some squares have basting stitches in them so I assume they were made around a template similar to English paper piecing.  Others have seam allowances ranging from  barely an eighth of an inch to almost half an inch.  It's pretty good sized (almost a twin size, I'd say), but there's very little repetition of the fabrics through out the whole of the quilt.  I wonder if maybe this was started by one maker and then worked on by another.  Maybe it was a community project.  I love imagining a scenario where every lady brought a stack of 4-patches to the Grange Meeting or the Quilting Bee and then they traded.  Or maybe it shows the development of the skills and circumstances of one quilter as she started out hand piecing and then got her first sewing machine?  I wish I knew.  I wish I knew why it was never quilted and why some if seemed to be have been ripped off.  One edge was particularly bedraggled, like the quilt top got stuck somewhere and was forcibly ripped out.  Is there a story there, or just carelessness?

Oh these prints! I love imagining dresses and aprons that these squares came from!

It's coming apart in many seams across the whole quilt.  There are some squares in the interior that have almost disappeared and some of the edge pieces have been reduced to shreds.   I knew I'd never restore it or use it as a quilt.  Some people would, I'm sure.  But my intention when I bought it was to give it new life by turning the usable parts into other things.  However, until this week, this treasure has been in a cloth shopping bag stuffed in a closet.  I just never took the time to do anything with it.  Until, the word vintage showed up in the Project Quilting post last weekend.  I KNEW that this was the time to do SOMETHING with this vintage quilt top.  I mean, if you can't get around to a long forgotten project during a quarantine, then when can you?

In the same closet where this quilt top has been hiding, there lived a plastic zip-loc bag that was handed to me by my mom several years ago.  I don't remember exactly when, but it was after her eyesight became too poor for her to sew and before dementia started to steal her away from us.  She was in the habit, for several years, of never visiting me (or letting me leave her house) without making sure that I had SOMETHING in my hands as we parted.  Sometimes it was a box of high school memories, or a bowl that had belonged to my grandmother.  Sometimes it was a Christmas decoration she'd picked up at a thrift store.  And, perhaps best of all, sometimes it was a gift from her sewing room to mine.  I remember that she said, when handing me the bag, "Here, maybe you can figure out what this was going to be."  We laughed about that.  About having a project you started that you can't remember, exactly.  Now, it breaks my heart a little.  She left so many projects unfinished.

The bag contained a piece of black wool felt cut into an "emblem" shape.  In its center she had already appliqued three circles of wool - red, black and gold -with a meticulously even blanket stitch.  In the corners of the "emblem" she had stitched red petals.  One red petal was accompanied by two green petals around it, and there were 5 more green petals in the plastic bag, along with a tangled bunch of embroidery floss.  I wonder now if she stopped stitching because she lost a petal?  Or because the floss had become too tangled?  I wish I knew.  And I wish I knew what it was going to be!  I assume it must have been part of a kit she'd picked up at some point.  The back of the black piece was odd.  Half of it had a rubbery coating on it.  Almost like an iron on adhesive.  But why would it have been prepped to iron on to something.  And why only half?  I have only a very few reasons to be sad in my life, but one of my greatest regrets is that I didn't spend time sewing with my mom in my adult life.  We both would have loved that, and I wish I had made time for it.  I wish she had told me all of her plans for all of her projects.  And I wish I had listened more to everything she said, no matter what it was about.  I'd love just one more real conversation with her.  She is still here, on Earth, but she isn't the mom I knew.  For 5 years now she has been slipping away into the shadowy corners of a different place.  Not quite here and not quite there.   We talk, sometimes, but it is without meaning.  And there are so many things I wish I could ask.

From her hands to mine.  

It didn't take long for me to know I wanted to  use these two "vintage" and precious  items together.  They didn't exactly "go" together, either in color or style or material.  But, somehow, it felt right that they be combined.  It hurt a little bit to take my seam ripper to the quilt top and my scissors to the wool piece.  But, I reasoned with myself that neither piece was being enjoyed in the state it was in.  Better to finish and enjoy them than let them stay undone.

Two thirds of the people I'm quarantined with preferred he top orientation of the petals. They lost.

As "luck" would have it I had a lovely triple matted frame in a box in the basement.  It had contained a picture of my little girls, but it hadn't seen the light of day in probably longer than the quilt or the wool pieces.  It took a bit of effort to create and stitch around a few green petals (I LOVE that I had felt almost the same color green!) and assemble all the various pieces using various implements.  But I thoroughly enjoyed the process.  It's kind of fun, sometimes, to dive into something having NO idea what you're doing!

It feels right that many hands contributed to this little gem.  My mom's, mine, and all the quilters who came before us.  We all shared in the joy of taking bits and pieces and putting them together to create beauty.

Thanks, Kim and Trish for hosting another week of Project Quilting.  Thanks for the inspiration to use and enjoy these vintage treasures!