Thirties fix: Triple Irish Flower Quilt and scrappy diamonds

Busy, busy, busy couple of weeks so not much sewing done.  Bits and pieces here and there in odd scraps of time but I don't feel I have really followed through properly on very much.  Quite frustrating, but yesterday I did manage to finish putting together my Triple Irish Rose Chain  top, so I can just about justify linking to Crazy Mom Quilts today.

You may recall from an earlier post (here) that I started this quilt to use up some of my old Thirties fabrics.  I have had the pattern (by Sheri Howard here on Moda Bakeshop) in my to-do pile for ages: since 2009 in fact.  Making the Double Irish Chain quilts recently spurred me on to tackle the Triple.  This pattern is a variation based on an old quilt, and I really liked the flowers created in the middles of the print blocks.

 I made my version a bit bigger than the pattern given: 49 blocks rather than 25, so the centre of my quilt measures 45" square, and I decided to add the pieced border which was on the original: yes, you guessed right, I still had oodles of pieced strips over and needed to use up more fabric....  With the border the top measures 62" square.




The border took almost as long to piece as the centre of the quilt but I feel it was worth it - I hope you agree.

The rather pretty zigzag edge will, alas, be chopped off when I have finished the quilting: I have left it untrimmed for now to try to stop the seams at the edges splitting, though I think I will probably staystitch as well, to be on the safe side - there are an awful lot of seams in the border....

I still have strips of pieced 1" squares so I will have to think of a project to use them up: watch this space.










Last night I wanted to do some mindless stitching for an hour to unwind so I sewed the uneven scraps and strings of the leftover Thirties fabrics to a firm synthetic foundation which I had cut into Lemoyne Star diamonds.

This is an ongoing project which won't be assembled for a good while yet, but it is incredibly satisfying to take a handful of scraps and produce a pile of neat finished shapes ready to stitch together at some time in the future for another quilt.

Much nicer than having the scraps hanging around in yet another plastic carrier bag, making me feel guilty.