Thursday, December 18, 2014

A Special Gift.

It started as a friendly chat with a quilter on FB. She said she had just bought another Lone Star quilt which had piecing issues and she should have known better as it had happened with another purchase years ago. I suggested she take it apart and re-make it so that the inset corner pieces and triangles lie flat. She has decided to take the latest one apart and recut the large diamond pieces to fit the plain pieces. Then she offered the original Lone Star disaster to me so I could re-make it. How could I refuse! The quilt top has just arrived from the US and I am thrilled. As I told you before I love to remake- these vintage treasures and give them new life. This one has lots of faded areas in the red diamond pieces but the fabric is otherwise in very good condition for a vintage quilt, probably made in the 1930s.
Can you spot the bright pink diamond here. Also three of the diamond pieces have a darker burgundy fabric on the outer pieces so she must have run out of fabric. The light fabric diamonds also change in the outer pieces.
It is all hand pieced, even the large plain pieces.

The stitching is very good but I think the measurement of the individual diamond pieces must vary which has led to the wavy edges where the plain fabric is inset.

There's that cute bright pink diamond. I think it gives it a really quirky look. What am I going to do with the top? I will take it all apart and re-make it by hand. To avoid the faded fabrics I will turn all of the red fabrics and use the underside which is still in good condition. I will probably disperse the burgundy diamonds so that they don't appear to be as a result of lack of fabric- or I may just re-make it the same as the original. Time will tell.
  What a blessing for me and I'm very grateful to the very generous quilter who shared this treasure with me. I can see why she bought it as it looks lovely when it's folded up and she failed to spread it out for a good look before purchase. Check back in a little while and we'll see how much I've done. In the meantime I'm getting those baby cot quilts finished and will share them soon.
Hugs, Jan Mac

3 comments:

Marijke said...

What an amazing quilt, Jan,
i think you so brave to do this job. good luck with it .

Jan Mac said...

Thanks Marijke. I'm not sure if I'm brave or crazy. Time will tell but I can't wait to get started.

Dawn said...

Lovely project, or is it labor of love? Nice the top found a good home.