Vintage Tuesday: Sampler Blast from the Past

I always wonder if I should put these types of posts under the general #TBT (Throwback Thursday) posts. I suppose it would sync with other sites, but somehow I feel like my own system works, too.

Fort Mason Sampler
Fort Mason Sampler

Over the weekend, I did some chores that had been languishing, including scanning a bunch of photos I found while clearing out boxes and drawers during Lent. Some of the photos were of quilts I just hadn’t seen in awhile. Others I didn’t have digital photos of for this site. One was a sampler I did when I took a drafting class at Fort Mason just after I got married.

I made the top and gave it to my mom who quilted it. Many of the fabrics I used were from my first Sampler quilt, which, at the time, was still unquilted – well, the quilting was in progress. I knew, even then, that quilting was less appealing than piecing and my mom liked the quilt.

The point of the class was quiltmaking, but more specifically drafting blocks. I talked about this topic a little in my review of The Quilters’ Album of Patchwork Patterns. I am much more familiar with how blocks are structured, but at the time, this was a challenging part of the class. I haven’t seen the quilt in a long time and in looking at the blocks, I am much less confused by how to draft them. I am not sure I could do it the way the teacher taught me at the time, but I could do it, I think.

Fort Mason Sampler Wreath
Fort Mason Sampler Wreath

My favorite block was the wreath type block. I really tried hard to make it look woven. I see some of the fabrics in that block are from one of the the Pointillist Palette quilts, so I must have already been working on those at the time.

Finished: Aqua-Red Sampler

Aqua-Red Sampler finished
Aqua-Red Sampler finished

Shortly after I finished the binding on Metroscape, I started and finished the binding on this sampler. I am pleased to have another finish! With this finish, I am crossing something off the list that has been on it for a long time. That feels great.

I showed it at BAM last Saturday and I was gratified at the response. I don’t think this sampler looks fuddy-duddyish, but I wasn’t sure how that more modern audience would take it. They liked it and it makes me want to pull out the Handbag Sampler and get back to it. I do think I would like to make some smaller blocks to go in a new sampler I might start, like the Star Sampler.

Aqua-Red Sampler back - finished
Aqua-Red Sampler back – finished

Is it Possible to Have too Much Icky Green?

These are the blocks that I have made so far as examples for my beginning quilt class. I usually keep most of them at the office for teaching purposes, so this was the first time I had put them all up together on the design wall.

The first thing I noticed was that there was too much of that acid/icky green. Not that you can really have to much of it, but I need to use more of the purse conversational with the black background in the future blocks (still have a fusible applique’, a foundation pieced block and some others to complete) and well as the tone-on-tone blue dot.

This is definitely a good example of why you should look at your quilt blocks before you finish them and put them together. I am not Paula Nadelstern who works on a tiny table and never looks at the whole quilt while it is in process. She is a genius and I strive to be like her.

I made one of the alternate blocks, the Nosegay, and had a lot of trouble which taught me to not slack on the templates. As some background, I was trying to print templates and HP Mobile printing, which never worked properly anyway, had taken over all the print functions on my computer. This prevented me from printing from
EQ5 directly. Always one to revert to pencil and paper, I drew out the block with pencil and paper and made the templates on graph paper. It went together fine until I got to the cone part of the block. The two background pieces were obviously too small.

Here is a detail of my transgressions. ;-0

I checked the template with the fabric and they matched. I couldn’t figure out the problem, then work got busy and we went skiing. Finally, this week I was forced to prepare some more templates for class and took drastic action by deleting the pathetic HP Mobile Printing. Now everything works fine. I can’t print directly, but I can save to PDF, which HP Mobile Printing was preventing from EQ5. I redid the templates for the Nosegay and sure enough all of the original templates were fine, except for those two tricky background pieces.

Now the block looks like this:

And here is the detail.

I also finished the basket. I like the way it turned out and was pleasantly surprised when I used the purse conversational with the black background as a background.