Blast From The Past

Enthused because I actually managed to finish one of my myriad projects (see previous post), I went searching around in my closet, and managed to unearth the quilt equivalent of Stonehenge - a Log Cabin quilt that I finished back in 1986 or so. I don't know if this quilt has ever made an appearance in this blog before - I doubt it because this used to be a knitting blog, and this quilt has been buried at the bottom of my closet, underneath various strata of yarn, fabric, wreath forms, and god knows what else.

I brought this quilt out today to give it a critical (!) look. Wow. The back looks like a shag rug because I never clipped threads while sewing, and the front looks nearly as bad.

I didn't trim the blocks to size, so some of them are, er, "puffy", to say the least. The colors are amazing - including chrome yellow, poison green, and red calico. I haven't seen these colors in quilt stores in quite a while! Oddly enough, while visiting another quilt store in Burlington, I saw new fabrics in these colors.

So, anyway, I got out my extra-large mat, ruler, and a rotary cutter and got to work "evening up" this behemoth. That took about an hour, mostly because the supervisor kept parking his 15 pound furry ass on the quilt, and took exception to being moved off (read: chomped my hand!). Finally finished without cutting off a paw or a finger, and it looks better, sort of.

I'm going to have to press the hell out of this thing. I don't know how it's going to quilt, but even if I have to utility quilt it, I'm not tossing it. Many of these fabrics are from my maternity clothes (well, I was pregnant in the 70's and 80's. The 70's were my hippie years. Give me a break.), and a lot of them have other memories attached. Plus, I just love it, flaws and all. I can remember sewing on this while my 5th son snoozed in his car seat in my sewing room while I sewed this, while taking breaks to work on Halloween costumes, including an award-winning Stegosaurus, for my other four sons.