6 Quilts in 6 Weeks Challenge – Week 5 and a Vintage Fabric Surprise

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy November to you! We are now in the thick of the holiday season – are you ready? How many of you are participating in the 6 Quilts in 6 Week Challenge and getting a few handmade gifts completed for holiday giving? I must admit – not me. I’m just trying to make a dent in my VRD UFO quilt stack. I’m just so thrilled that I’ve already completed 5 unfinished projects. Yay me! I just need to keep it going after our lovely Challenge ends next week.

And our lucky Week 4 winner is ………….

Susan T.

Now let’s check out my Week 5 finish!

6 Quilts in 6 Weeks – Week 5

This past week has been a busy one, so for this week, I chose a table runner to complete. I had a fun summer version of Pinwheel Picnic ready and waiting. It was a sample I made for the VRD Table Runner a Month program my Friday Group (Hey Ladies!) did maybe 3 years ago.

Yup – another one bites the dust. Wahoo!

Get your digital pattern HERE or your print pattern HERE.

Have you ever made Pinwheel Picnic? It’s a fun one that goes together quickly and finishes at 16″ x 48″. It uses 5″ squares, but you could also use your stash! And it’s easy to add extra blocks to make it longer if you wanted.

I used an older fun summery fabric collection with citrus fruit and flowers by designer Sandy Gervais.

My Before Photo –

My After Photo –

I chose to quilt my runner with straight lines in orange thread about 1/2 inch apart. By no means are my lines actually straight, but I think it turned out pretty well. It will look even better once it’s washed and puckered. I stitched the quilting lines with my walking foot. The I used a solid orange for the binding and machine stitched it on with a yellow floral print for the back from my stash.

Here’s a close up of my quilting.

It really feels good to have 5 projects completed.

I can’t wait to show you what I found yesterday!

My Vintage Fabric Find

I connected to a quilter and antique quilt collector online who was relocating to Alabama. She had culled her antique textile collection before her move and I am the very lucky adopter of her leftovers. But these leftovers are fantastic! Let me show you what I got.

YIPPEE! When I emptied the plastic bags of goodies – they filled an entire laundry basket. Lynn told me she’d acquired her collection here and there, online and at antique shops, which is pretty much how my own textile museum – er, collection – has grown over the years. LOL!

There were lots of great quilt blocks, both in sets or as orphan blocks.

Some of you may know that my quilting roots started in auctions, museums, and antique fabrics long before I’d ever made my first quilt block. Back in 2010, after acquiring a local woman’s scrap bag, quilt blocks, quilts, and tops which spanned more than 100 years, I wrote my first quilt book, Orphan Block Quilts. It’s now out of print, but you can still find it as print copies or as a download.

You can find the download HERE.

During the pandemic, I found another love in textile history – feed sacks! So I was thrilled to find lots of feed sack pieces amongst my new textile finds as well as 3 sewn strips of Log Cabin blocks with even more feed sacks! Lucky me! Oh my! What treasures I am finding in my new basket of scraps!

I really enjoy documenting all the different patterns and designs of the feed sacks I find. I even started putting my examples into books (big surprise, right?). My first volume is available and eventually the second volume will be, too, as soon as I finish it.

You can find it HERE.

I even used vintage feed sack squares in one of my VRD patterns, too.

Get your digital pattern HERE or your print pattern HERE.

Who knows? Maybe this new textile stash will inspire a new VRD pattern down the road. We shall see….

Well, that’s it for me today. I need to figure out which project I’ll be completing for next week’s Week 6 (and the last week) of our 6 Quilts in 6 Weeks Challenge. And then, I’m going to play in my new textile collection.

See you right here next week.

Until then –

Sew. Laugh. Finish. Play. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @ VRD