1940's Quilt Love

Way back in the new year, I was faced with one of my most favourite things: the opportunity to start a new quilt. There's little more exciting, I'm sure other quilters out there will know what I'm nattering on about. Oooh, which pattern, which fabrics, what size, how to quilt it, how to bind it. So many decisions, each one entirely delicious.

I had a look through my quilting files for inspiration. These house photos I've taken from various sources, extracts from books or mags which my quilty partner-in-crime (my sister) has sent to me, print-outs of free patterns from the 'net and so on. My favourite quilting mag is the American Mc Calls Quilting (this can waiver each month, of course!) and I am always keen to see which vintage design takes up the last page of each issue. You are able to go onto their website and download the pattern for free which indeedy I had done and filed away, when this 1940's beauty had caught my eye.

And so off I went, on a project I've picked up now and then between other things. I'm pleased to say I finally finished it just last week (come on, two and a half months is a long time for me). Sunny day? Must be a ta-dah then!

The bright sun is really making the colours POP!

It's enjoying a little flutter in the breeze! It's quite a large quilt, 56 blocks which are about 9" square each. It only just fitted across my quilting table. The floral fabrics are entirely vintage from the 1940s-'50s and the chevrons are in modern plain cottons (Moda's Bella Solids, vintage inspired colours) and dots, some vintage and some new.

It was a pretty easy design to execute, made up of the ever-versatile half square triangle. I used every feedsack design I own, some have much brighter and zany patterns than the vintage cottons I normally sew with, so it was good to be able to use them. Whilst I love the designs on feedsacks and so do give in to temptation sometimes to buy them, they are a bit trickier to sew with than modern cottons because they are more loosely woven which gives more room for movement (which you don't want, you want your blocks nice and square), particularly here where triangles have bias edges and are more likely to distort. Sellers love to describe them as "tight weave" but I can say from experience, a feedsack is always going to be loosely woven compared with a modern cotton. I used plenty of spray starch to try to get them to keep their shape.

The back is a modern polka dot cotton which I think captures the spirit of the era, and the binding is a solid red quilting weight cotton from The Cotton Patch (nice weight but frayed a lot along the edges, I found).

I quilted each block simply in the ditch with a walking foot but then felt the quilt needed more. So I quilted within each "diamond" created by the intersecting spaces between the chevrons. This was not the easiest task as I was working from the middle of the quilt, stopping and starting often, and having to rotate the quilt constantly which is a bit of a pain with a quilt this size. But in the end, it was done of course, the frazzled nerves soothed by getting up from the quilting table and having frequent breaks, and I was pleased I had done it!

Finally, the little name patch was sewn on so that wherever this quilt should one day end up, somebody will know it was made by me in good old Blighty in the year 2011. My sister thinks up whacky names for all her quilts but I am more boring and so I just went with the straight forward "1940's Chevron Quilt"!

Now all that remains is to enjoy it...

...and move onto the next project, of course!

(The design was featured in the July/August 2010 issue of Mc Call's Quilting, the free downloadable pattern is available here.)