Fabric Diary

Some of my fabric scraps I throw into a wicker laundry basket and others I have "catalogued" by decade and stored in ziplocs. Sounds crazy, I know. So when I decided to make a quilt to celebrate the Millennium in 2000, I thought it would be a great way to use some of the fabrics in my collection. It took me seven months to make Fabric Diary.   

In 1999, I had repaired a quilt for a friend and really liked the design. I was so inspired that I decided to make a quilt that featured rows of 25-patch blocks with fabrics from different decades. The sashing is Millennium fabric which I purchased and the strips in the border are scraps from a quilt that I made for my daughter in 1995. 

 

The earliest fabrics are in the top row. They are ones that were given to me by a friend of my grandmother's when I was a sophomore in high school. Alice worked in the fabric department at Macy's in NYC and one day she dropped off a big box of samples because she knew I liked to sew. Now these fabrics are considered VINTAGE :) Oh, my!

 These '70s fabrics seem to multiply. I still have some, just in case.

The last block in the lower right has reproduction conversational prints and Millennium fabrics from my dear friend, Natalie Hart. We used to swap fabrics.

 

I'd been saving orphan blocks and rejects from other projects and decided to put them all together for the back of the quilt. It really is a conglomeration. Note the hanging sleeve at the bottom of the back. I sent the quilt out to be quilted and it was returned to me with the back on upside down.

I made this block at a workshop years ago. I never could figure out what to do with it.

And, here's a row of Album blocks that were totally rejected for another project.

There are fabrics in this quilt that will always remind me of the days when I was the family seamstress: a blouse or two I made for my mother; dresses, skirts, and tops for me, and coordinated outfits for my daughter.