So this one… made entirely from vintage sheets. Well, almost entirely. I think one of the orange solids was from a stash.

I really liked making this one. I though about this particular pattern ever since I saw a Vera scarf at a thrift store, months ago (and I did NOT buy it for whatever reason). It did not have the solid squares, it was all stripes, and all in one color – black I believe.

I only wished I had more stripes to work with. I did not want to repeat any – it was repeat all or none. To repeat all – the quilt would have been too big – well, too big for my machine anyway. I am still afraid of that, but one day…

Quilting was a little challenging. First I wanted to do free motion – I thought it would look nice against such graphic design. But it just would not work. My thread kept breaking. I could not adjust the tension… But I tried… And then ended up having to rip one full square of quilting…  No fun.

I ended up doing straight line, but a spiral pattern, on a diagonal across 4 blocks. I am not sure if you can see it in the pics. I decided to do two different style of the spiral – one denser and the other less so. I wish I had only done one. I though there would be more of an effect – with different quilting lines. But not so much.

I used another thrifted striped sheet for the backing. As it usually works with these sheets, the colors match!

Overall I like it. A lot. I planned for the stripey squares to be a bit bigger, but then I had a problem with one of them – it had to be trimmed, so they all got trimmed a bit. That’s why I added a white border. It was not planned. And maybe I could have made the solid squares 1/2 in bigger? Less white? Maybe next time….

No triangles were cut for this one!

And arranged one way:

And then another:

Trimming wasn’t planned, but a few squares turned out smaller than the others. Reason? Well, this quilt is made of all repurposed vintage linens which are almost always a blend. In my experience, they do not always like ironing. I do have my iron set to a lower setting, but some squares get warped anyway.

Therefore, this quilt ended up smaller than designed, so I will probably add white border around it. I thought about adding a few more squares, but I have only one more color I have not used, and I did not want to repeat some – I think the way this quilt works is to either use all different colors or repeat all. But it will be a baby/throw size in the end and that’s OK.

Second… I have been planning sewing up a few more camisoles, using the vintage sheets that are lying everywhere in my studio. Remember the first two – Flo and Mo. I really liked Flo, but Mo…. I liked the way it turned out, but I did not care so much for the pattern. So there will be Mo 2.0 in the near future. And maybe a couple more. But I have realized I needed to learn more about pattern drafting, which is what I have been researching for the past week or so. So, today, right after I finish writing this, I will be making my first sloper. Wish me luck. I will be back soon to report on the progress…

The last time I wrote about it I had just finished all the blocks. It took some time to arrange them, a few different layouts and a couple of days “taking it in”…

It is the biggest quilt I have made and I knew quilting straight lines would not be fun on my machine – I have a Singer that was not made for quilting, so a big quilt just cannot fit… However, I was a little afraid of free motion quilting – I did it only one time before, on a pillow – much smaller and much more manageable. I didn’t know how it would go, how long it would take… But I had no other choice. And I had to say – it did take long, but it was not so bad. I had a bit of an issue with thread – it kept breaking. I changed it a few times, and finally settled on a cotton thread.

At the end – I was so happy how it turned out. It took a long time – there were a lot of strips, but the blocks were easy to make. I would like to make another one like this… some day.

all 120 of them. That is 120 of the smaller squares, 4 of the same make up a bigger square (the “cross”). So the quilt will be made up of 30 “crosses” or “windmills” (depending on what you see!). I showed you the first 6 in a previous post. Here is the next 12:

and the last 12:

To recap… I made each “windmill” by cutting 1.5 in wide strip, about 23 in long. Then I cut this long, 5.5 in wide strip into 5.5×5.5 squares. You may notice that 4 times 5.5 is 22, but I cut strips longer – just in case…

I used 5 different fabrics for each “windmill”. I believe i used 4 different prints in each “windmill”, which makes it 120 different prints )some from vintage sheets too). I used 4-5 different fabrics for the lightest strips (one of them white), only because I did not have enough different fabrics with such small print on white. Therefore… I used about 125 different prints. What, I have so many prints in red/pink (I did use a few blacks and grays)? No comment.

This took a while. Longer than I anticipated. I would like to finish all the “windmills” tomorrow, so I can start figuring out the final layout. I know that will take some time. I will have to let it sit and “simmer” for a while. This will include me looking at it, switching blocks, looking some more, switching more blocks, looking.. you get the picture…

This is not the order the blocks are going to be in the quilt. This is just the order I am making them in…

The first six blocks…