Dust off an Old Quilt Book

March 03, 2020

Last year when this blog hop came around I remember thinking I should really start a blog because it sounded so fun to dig out your old quilt books and make something. So now that I've started blogging I had to join in. Bea organized this hop and did a fantastic job with it. I am a sucker for books and old quilt books are sometimes even harder for me to pass up.
Right after I signed up I went to look for two discarded library books I thought I'd picked up but I only found one of them. No big deal since the copyright was 1978. While I was sure there may be quilters with older books I figured 1978 is before I was born so it counted as old for me. I had a project picked out (which is not what I ultimately made) when I went to our local library book sale. Looking through their book boxes I found two older craft books that begged to come home with me. So if one project from an old quilt book is good three must be even better right!
From my first book I planned to make this monkey growth chart.

To make it a border around a string quilt I need to make a little bigger. However by the time I was able to start it I realized two things-1. I likely wouldn't have time to finish it and 2. those monkeys would be a bigger border than I really wanted. My second choice project was this cute nativity. I collect nativities when we travel so I thought a quilted one would work well in my holiday decor. I felt like the original pattern was cute but it was a little too Hansel and Gretel meet Matryoshka dolls meets the Holy family. So I decided I was only going to focus on the Holy family not make the entire stable and angel. The pattern calls for making your people detachable so they could be ornaments or part of the nativity scene but I really don't think I would use them as ornaments so I didn't make them two sided. I also chose to use my scraps of fabric rather than felt. I still need to bind this one but otherwise it is ready to display this Christmas.

When we had gone to Williamsburg last Thanksgiving I wrote about going to the art museum and loving the ornaments. I looked at the book they had of patterns for their ornaments and was kind of sad that not much was quilted. So when I saw an older version of Williamsburg's Art museum ornaments at my library sale I browsed to make sure there were projects I'd be more likely to make. Although for a quarter I think I'd have brought it home either way. I decided on a star ornament. This time I did sew in the felt the book called for (I'm thinking felt obsession was a 70s theme!) I may try to make a few more of these for Christmas this year but I'll likely do them in cottons.

Finally the library had this book of Heirloom quilt patterns. I'm not sure if this is technically a book or a magazine but my library had it in the book boxes not on the magazine shelf so...Our fair has a block contest each year so I decided I'd make a single oak leaf block for that or if I find another block I prefer by August maybe this will become a pillow. I did like several patterns from this book and may eventually make a full quilt from it.