Planet Nice Crafts

Well, the snow has melted and there has been some beautiful weather but the Winter/Spring transition is fickle and we are expecting a winter-like storm tonight and tomorrow. Before I give a status report on the quilt, I want to summarize some tidbits from my reading on quilt history, namely because I have to return the book in a few hours! From the book Quilts The American Story by Susan Jenkins and Linda Seward: Nice Cover Post-Revolutionary War, a tradition arose for neighborhoods to interact through cooperative labor; tasks included clearing timber, house and barn raisings, and needlework and textile production a la the “quilting bee”. Social gatherings for quilting occurred even on the frontier when possible despite the distances between households. Early industrialization of textile manufacturing created an abundance of cotton prints and therefore, women of all social classes had the opportunity to take up quilting, a sort of democratization. In the 18 th century,...

Slow but steady progress has been made on the quilt top. The wintry weather has made it easier to seclude myself so a little sewing can be done and a lot of homework 😉. Here is a shot from this weekend’s storm: The column is a decent measure of snowfall! Moving on to the quilt, a few more cutting steps were next and what should have taken 2 minutes led to a full day adventure of sorts. This is where I started off with the focal blocks: But this is what was the ending of the adventure: Can you tell the differences? Actually, looking at it now, I don’t see the mistake as obviously. The next step was to create the angles on the focal blocks, yes more cutting with a dull blade. The 1 st and 3 rd   blocks were cut smoothly without issue, but one of the neurons was not firing correctly that day and I ended up cutting the 2 nd and 4 th blocks the same way instead of mirror images! After some brain muscle flexing, I came up with a rescue plan. Luckily, I saved th...