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Old Nine - I Love Nine Patches
Old Nine - I Love Nine Patches
Published:
Aug 17 2016 - 04:00
Good morning! I’m so excited to be with you today to share my Old Nine quilt – it’s in the brand new “I Love Nine Patches” book from Martingale.
I was asked to tell you a little bit about myself so… I grew up in Indiana and owned a quilt shop named Needle in the Haystack before moving to Texas in 2012. I work in the Marketing Department at Moda with a group of super-talented, creative women – best. job. ever. My primary responsibilities are overseeing our kit program and working on “special projects”.
When I was asked to be a part of the I Love Nine Patches book, I knew right away that I wanted to recreate one of my antique quilts. I’m not sure when or why I started collecting old quilts but I know I enjoy having them. As you might know, they’re addicting and you can’t have just a few! My all-time favorite color is blue, and I love anything and everything Americana. So when I spied this old quilt with tiny piecing and lots of scraps while antique “junking”, I couldn’t pass it up. I also love that it looks well-loved.
When I started working on my version of the quilt, I hung the antique in my sewing room and tried to be guided by the colors in each block. There are probably a couple of places where I changed the color a bit but mostly, it’s pretty close.
I had a great time going through my scraps to pull out fabrics that I thought would get the look I wanted – blues, reds, browns, greens, tans, pinks, and even purples for my tiny nine-patches. When I finish a project, I usually down the leftover fabrics into 1 ½” 2 ½”, 3 ½” and 4 ½” strips or squares. Then I store them in plastic bins for projects just like this one.
The 1 ½” strips are my favorite size by far. I keep the strips in plastic shoe boxes sorted by color, and the 1 ½” squares look pretty stored in a Ball canning jars.
Are you a scrappy quilt-maker? If so, how do you store your scraps?
For my alternate squares and border, Moda's Pure & Simple Wovens were great. They were the right color, they’re very soft and they look like old-fashioned homepuns and tickings.
While sewing for myself and for Moda, I’ve learned that it pays to be organized when sewing a lot of small pieces. So I line up what I need to sew and stack the pieces so I keep them in the right order.
The quilting on the antique quilt is a design called “Hanging Diamonds”. There are straight lines going vertically – spaced a little more than 1” apart. Then there are diagonal lines going just one way. I loved the simplicity of it so I duplicated that quilting on my quilt. Laid side-by-side, the two quilts look like twins.
In a few years, I know my new “Old Nine” will have the same well-loved look as the antique.
Since I know I'm not the only one who loves nine-patches and scrappy quilts, I'm going to share three copies of this great book.
Leave a comment by Midnight on Sunday, August 21, and you're entered to win. You can tell me how you sort and store your scraps! (Winners will be notified via e-mail.)
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