Stitching the pieces together

Oh Meece, I've just come to the forum for my daily fix and I've checked out the old quilts that you posted.  They are superb!  the fabrics fantastic with the softness of color that I remember from the fifties and earlier.  I think you are right about the SU in the fabric being from a sugar sack.  There are some early examples I've seen here in Aus. with the same thing.  The earlier generations had to be very inventive when it came to getting fabrics to use for making something that was essentially a bedding item.  We on the other hand have the luxury of choosing from a massive range to make something that, although some are used everyday, most are purely decorative.

This is a quilt from the book Home Sweet Home, but I changed all the houses and used homes from a nearby 19th-century town. My guild raffled the quilt last fall and we raised quite a bit to give to the fund for the upkeep of the one-room schoolhouse (center block).

GORGEOUS!!

Anna - That is gorgeous - what detail.

Use a stabilizer under the quilt square to keep it from "tightening" as you call it. Works like a breeze. You can either get one that your remove after, or let stay. Even a second piece of muslin will help hold everything in place.

That's a good idea Sheila! And then you could keep crocheting as they admired the done one. I hand appliqued some art deco "tiles" while my DH was in the hospital once. I hated people interrupting me!!

Sharon - You must have other crafts you do.  We would like to see some pictures - please!

I always have a quilt or two going.   My DH quit asking me a long time ago who I am making the quilts for.  Most times I don't know.  I do tend to make them up and save them for gifts if I need one.

I am finishing a queen size quilt for me. in 2008 my quilt guild had a 'mystery quilt' challenge where we were told how much of 8 different fabrics to buy and how each letter compared to each other (A - focus fabric, b- dark one color, c - med same color, D - light same color, and so on). then we got directions in stages (cut so many 2.5 inch strips out of fabrics b,c,e), sew strips together in certain patterns and cut apart into strip sets. and sew different strip sets back together. We didn't know what it was going to look like until we were about 2/3 of the way into the mystery. The quilt finished about full bed size using their directions without borders. I used fabric from my stash and my mother's stash so I had plenty of extra fabrics to use for borders and got ti to a large queen size. I finally gave up my idea to hand quilt it, I just wanted to get it done, and paid one of the other members to machine quilt it. I am almost done finishing the borders on it. This is my first quilt large enough for my bed.

Most of my quilts are smaller for baby shower quilts or wall hangings. Although I did make a Fireman quilt for a young boy at church for his Twin bed. His mother purchased a print with firemen scenes and I cut squares out of it and checkerboarded it with grey. I machine quilted it with a corner to corner straight stitching.

Ivtwoqlt, your quilt sounds great and very interesting!  Would love to see a pic of it even unfinished.