Persevere

Persevere [pur-suh-veer] verb: to persist in anything undertaken; maintain a purpose in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement; continue steadfastly.

The nine-patches in this antique quilt are 1.5 inches square and they are all hand pieced. There are 11,600 pieces in the quilt! The maker of this quilt really knew how to maintain her purpose in spite of the obstacles in her life that tried to derail her from her purpose. So let that be a lesson to me!

I have not blogged, stitched or quilted for nearly a month. I haven't even read blogs for weeks. The faster I go, the behinder I get. (Not sure whom to credit with that since there are several education journal articles with that or a similar title.) Worst of all, I broke my (new) camera on my trip to the beach in early June so I had no motivation to sew since I couldn't document my progress. Hmm, is that a reason not to make progress? Sounds a bit like the "if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear, does it make a sound" conundrum.

While I spun my wheels (and bought fabric, but that's another post), many of you have been very, very productive. I finally got back to blog reading (nothing like a work deadline to make the attention wander) this morning and found some wonderful pictures here and here and here, for just a start.

I replaced my camera yesterday so hopefully I can get back to what I love. At least I can now take pictures of all the new fabric I bought this month.

Back in the day, the quilts were big

I've been admiring the lovely pastel 30's reproduction fabrics Kathie has been using and am inspired to lighten things up for spring (oops, it's nearly summer). Here is a stack of a couple of antiques and a couple of my own oldies. I have my 30's repro fabrics out and have asked them to get busy and tell me what to do with them. So far, they're keeping their ideas to themselves. In the meantime, I'll share some past projects. These are all bed size quilts which I don't make much of anymore now that my stitching time is so limited.


The picture above is an antique quilt I bought about 4 years ago before my quilting hiatus. My holders did not appreciate the need to keep things taught (conscripted labor, what can I say) in order to show off the spectacular quilting. This quilt is BIG--I haven't measured so I cannot say exactly how big. It has tiny, even stitching and is heavily quilted. The quilt is really thin so I think the batting layer might be a piece of flannel and not actually batting.


This is another antique that I bought when my daughter was born so I've had it for 20 years. It graced the bed of the "girl" room in my house until she got old enough to start trying to use markers and nail polish on her bed. It was in excellent shape when I got it and it managed to escape a toddler with minimal damage. It's been stored folded at the bottom of a pile of quilts for several years and it is clearly time to treat it more kindly. The quilting is very nice on this one.

This is a quilt I made from a pattern in a magazine. I am very bad about labels because I thought I'd always remember all the details. I was wrong. This one is machine stipled and it has been well used so it's very soft. I just love the 30's repros on the green background.

This is another scrappy 30's repro quilt I made several years ago. This one spent time recently with one of my college sons and the harsh light of day revealed that it is pretty gross right now. I am going to see if we can clean it up and give it a break. It, too, is machine stiple quilted. I believe the pattern came from a Marsha McCloskey book.

Finally, a top I hope soon becomes a new finish. I made this one pre quilting hiatus and I found it patiently waiting to be finished. The pattern comes from a book, but I cannot remember the title or author right now. I want to get it machine quilted and am open to referrals if any of you have professional machine quilters to recommend.