Work in Progress Wednesday

Shirt Off My Back Quilts

This week I have been continuing to work on my  Blue Shirt Off My Back Quilt (SOMB). I got all the blocks put together by Thursday of last week and then sashed them. I chose a royal blue from my recycled fabric stash for the borders and backing. I will bind it in that as well. I got the quilt sandwiched on Tuesday afternoon






I had over 200 of the 9 Patch blocks left to use up. I found some brown fabric in the recycled fabric stash and used that for the sashing of 144 more of the blocks. I got the blocks all done by Saturday and the top put together by Sunday night apart from the borders which I completed on Monday using cream calico from my recycled fabric stash

Brown SOMB sans cream border

This is the backing fabric I used. It was new but very old. It was fabric that my aunt had bought many years ago but never used. My aunt died in 2012 in her 100th year and last year I helped my cousin's wife, Joyce, do some of the packing up of the house. My aunt was a real pack rat and never, it seems, threw anything away. Joyce gave me lots of fabric and linen that I could use in my various quilting projects. I am just very glad that I wasn't tracking my stash then!

This fabric is gorgeous. I can just imagine it made up into a dress in the 50s or 60s style. It was 36" wide so that gives you an idea of the age. Dress fabric hasn't been sold in that width for many many years. There was about 10 yards of it, enough to make two quilt backings and a bit left over. I joined the two pieces I needed for the backing with a strip of 9 patches with a band of brown between each block

On Tuesday I took the Brown SOMB along with 2 other quilts I had to sandwich, up to our club rooms in order to use the big table we have up there for the job.  I got the Disappearing Pinwheels repinned and the blue SOMB quilts pinned no dramas but when I laid out the brown  SOMB  I found that the backing wasn't big enough. I had forgotten the borders when calculating the width of the backing I had to make and instead of being 3-4" bigger all around it was about the same width. I had remembered to make it longer. I was so cross with myself.  I bought it home and spent Tuesday evening piecing in another strip of the nine patch blocks. I got the back completed late Tuesday night which meant I would be able to pin it Wednesday at our regular group sewing day.

The two strips of 9 patches on the back. Sorry the pictures are wrinkled... I took them after I had pinned the quilts

I now have 3 lovely quilts to quilt. Think I will have to revise my Craftsy class with Wendy Butler Byrne to review what I want to do

I made 346 of the 9 patches to start with. I used 121 in the Blue SOMB and 144 in the Brown SOMB top and another 24 on the back and I have 57 left which I would like to make into something by our retreat in June.

this is all I have left. The box was full before I started.

 I am looking for patterns that could incorporate a 5" 9 patch centre square. I found this one at Quilters Cache. Its called Dolly Madison's Star #2 which I can adapt pretty well I think. My centre block will be multicoloured rather than dual coloured. It will take a lot of other fabrics and I may not be able to stick to my "Only recycled fabrics" in the SOMB quilts which was a challenge I had set myself. I will have to see. I don't think I have enough coloured fabrics. However I really like it. If anyone has any other suggestions I am happy to hear them. My other concern with this block is that the 9 patch is such a small part of the block that will end up 13". I will probably only end up using 25 or 30 of them in a pretty decent sized quilt! I could use more in the borders and on the back I suppose.