Barbara’s doll quilt is finished. One quick dip in a tea bath was just enough to tone down the bright white to match the border that I selected after I’d made all the blocks. My quilts are always done this way — never completely planned at the beginning.

The quilting is diagonal in the blocks and border, with a little heart and leaf motif in the white triangles. The prints in the top and the binding are all vintage 1930’s fabrics in Barbara’s favorite colors — the back is a new tiny blue printed check and the batting is a piece of flannel sheeting.

Sawtooth Doll Quilt
Machine pieced, hand quilted
Martha Dellasega Gray, 2010
16″ x 20″

Yesterday I made this doll quilt for my friend, Barbara, at Oodles and Oodles. Last month she sent me a box of cute vintage scraps which I assigned to several different quilt projects. A little doll quilt seemed like a nice way to thank her, and I was just thinking about the colors when amazingly, she wrote a post about her favorite colors and pictured several vintage items as examples. The doll quilt was set in motion.

This Sawtooth pattern is from Gwen Marton’s Twenty Little Triangle Quilts (out of print, but still available from other sellers on Amazon). The prints are vintage 30s in Barbara’s favorite colors, and the top measures 16″ x 20″. This week I’ll do the hand quilting, and then it will be on its way to New York.

Update: I just finished tea-dying the top which toned down the white — it looks much better now. I’ll post another photo after it’s quilted.

This is a pattern from Mini Quilts From Traditional Designs, by Corcoran and Wilkinson. The book is out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon. I made this years ago when I first began using vintage fabric. The brown and tan background fabrics are reproduction, and the compass circles are vintage. Several of the prints in the compasses are much more contemporary than the period represented by the repro backgrounds, but I didn’t know much about vintage fabrics back then.

The circles were hand pieced and then appliqued onto the background fabric. This is a challenging pattern to make in this size, as you can probably tell from my wonky blocks. I started hand quilting this top, but after I was about two-thirds finished, I freaked out and decided I didn’t like it. It has been lying in a box until yesterday when I took it out and ripped out all of the quilting. I’m going to do the same quilting design, but this time I’m going to use tape instead of trying to draw pencil lines (thanks Kathie for the idea). The top is 17″ square.

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. UPDATE: I was contacted by Embroiderist on Flickr (who has an amazing collection of vintage embroidery patterns), and she said “This cover art is by American needlework artist Georgiana Brown (Mrs. Frank Godwin) Harbeson 1894 -1980.  She did a whole series of these needlework covers in the early 1930’s.” 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.