The second row has been finished for several days, and I’m just getting around to taking photos.  I was able to cut a lot more squares for the sashing with some pretty vintage scraps sent to me by Barbara at Oodles and Oodles. Thank you, Barbara!

A few of the original designs are going to be swapped out for some from another vintage “follow-the-colors” coloring book.  I asked my daughter, Emily, to select the designs since the quilt was her idea. The other book is generally not as cute, but a few of the drawings are really good.
 
In the evenings, I am trading off between hand quilting the doll quilt and embroidering these blocks — this way I hope to prevent the carpal tunnel symptoms which seem to be exacerbated by the motion of hand quilting.

Since I am working on a Christmas quilt and am still sort of “in the spirit,” I thought I would post this darling pattern just in case someone would like to stitch it up for Christmas, 2010. This may be my all-time favorite cover of Needlecraft, The Home Arts Magazine.  The designer’s name is a little hard to make out, but I think it’s Georgietta Brown Horbeson. Here is the tiny blurb about the cover which was on one of the inside pages.

This Month’s Cover Design

No. 33 – 23 – 43.  Christmas Morning Hot-iron transfer-pattern.  15 cents. Perforated stamping-pattern, 30 cents. Design stamped on 22 1/2-by-23-inch cream linen, 55 cents. Crewel wool to embroider, $1.60.  (Color-and-stitch chart included  with patterns and stamped materials).

I wish I could order that stamped linen with all the wool for $2.15, but I’ll just have to make do with this funky pattern I made in Photoshop. It didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped (and you probably will need to use a light box instead of a transfer pencil because of all the stitching lines), but maybe having both the original photo and the pattern in its original size will enable me (and you) to copy this cute embroidery.

The top is finished, but it doesn’t have quite as many blocks as I had planned. There wasn’t enough of the sashing print, so the quilt ended up a square instead of a rectangle. It’s going to be interesting hand quilting this one because it has a lot more seams than any of my other doll quilts — I think I will use a very thin batting and probably just bleached muslin for the back. It’s a 20″ square.

Two more rows completed on this little top — and two more to go.  I’m not sure about some of my color choices and it’s very busy, but since this is only the second quilt I’ve made with this color pallete, I’m pretty happy with it. When making a doll quilt, I like the blocks to be scaled just like a large quilt, so I want them to be fairly small and intricate. This quilt top is currently 18 inches wide, but I will add at least one narrow border.

I put the Lockport Quilt Booklet in my downloads.  There are some nice applique patterns in it, but I’m sorry about the quality of the text — it was tricky to reduce the size and still manage to keep it readable.

Lockport Batting Company published several booklets and leaflets of Anne Orr quilt designs. I have two of the booklets and a few leaflets. Following up on the Anne Orr inspired quilt designs that I recently posted, I thought I would show you some of the original patterns from this 1944 publication.

These old booklets have yellowed with age and have a few stains. I’ve cleaned up these few pages with the cross stitch type designs. I will finish cleaning up the other pages next week, make a pdf document and place it in my downloads.

The top is finally done, and I am so happy with it. The reproduction striped sashing reminds me of the original sashing (which was rotten), and the antique fabrics from my stash fit in well with the original prints. Here, once again, is the original top.

And here is the revised top, which is quite a bit smaller since I had to reduce the size of the blocks.

The weirdest thing happened when I was cleaning up these photos — I noticed that even though I fixed the incorrect block in the upper right corner of the original top, I made the same mistake on one of the half blocks in the top row of the revised quilt. I accidentally turned the interior, partial 9-patch upside down. I can’t tell you how many times I looked at that block when I was putting the top together and I never noticed it. Apparently, the same thing happened to the original quilter and it was just meant to be, so I am not changing it since it cracked me up when I saw it.

This is probably getting monotonous, but I still am not ready to show photos of the Album quilt top, although I am getting close. I’m also continuing to work in the evenings on the Christmas quilt and the second row is nearly complete — pictures coming soon.

This is a quilt design copied from a pattern in the April, 1984 issue of Quilter’s Newsletter. There was a whole series called “Scrap Quilts,” many of which I bookmarked for future projects. This pattern appealed to me so much that I managed to let go of my obsession to use just vintage prints. There was no way I would be able to find appropriate fabrics for the backgrounds, or enough of the same print for the corner diamonds. Consequently, the only vintage prints in these blocks are the D pieces which are from some really big vintage Double Wedding Ring arcs.

My block is reduced a bit from the original 15″ block to accommodate the size of my DWR pieces — it’s still a pretty big block. Hand piecing works best for this pattern because of all the curves and set-in pieces, and the diagramed example works very well for stitching the three units together. The sashing color in the magazine photo is so cute, but I tried a few orangey & gold colors and thought they looked terrible with my blocks — I’ll have to keep looking.

Because I am still working on the antique quilt tops (bed and doll) and am not quite ready to show photographs, I thought I would post some more vintage embroidery patterns. These pretty floral designs were a special mail order item from The Workbasket Magazine. I think they are so cute with their colored highlights. My envelope contained only 23 designs, so I wonder if I am missing at least one pattern. Here are a few of the flowers — an Acrobat document with all 23 flowers is available on the sidebar under downloads.  Any of these designs are pretty on their own, but they would also make an amazing quilt if used together.

Although Anne Orr certainly designed other styles of quilts, these charted type designs always remind me of her.  These are patterns from a 1969-70 McCall’s Needlework & Crafts magazine and no designer is credited.  I have a feeling I’ve seen these reprinted somewhere else, but maybe it was just a similar pattern.

I’ve never attempted one of these quilts, but they are very appealing.  The patterns are simple squares and triangles which can be easily drafted on graph paper. Actually, you could adapt any simple cross-stitch design using this technique. I think any of these patterns would make an especially cute quilt for a child.

Just in case you want to stitch one of these up for that special someone on Valentine’s Day.  Click on the gallery images to enlarge them.