I've Got The Blues

For more than 30 years I've been holding onto a well-loved Double X quilt that I purchased for $2.00 at a garage sale thinking I'd like to reproduce it some day. Well, that thought finally came to fruition this year but not in the form of a reproduction quilt. I was inspired to make three different projects: a Double X wallhanging, a Mini Flying Geese doll quilt and a notebook cover.  

 

This is the Double X quilt (actually one of six) that I purchased in 1975. Back then I washed the quilt in the washing machine, threw it in the dryer and then put it on my son's bed where our St. Bernard chewed two holes in it.

And these are my three new projects that were inspired by that quilt.

I've been collecting blue fabrics for the past five years or so. 

Here is a detail of the blues in the old quilt--stripes and solids. 

And here are my blue prints. I started making 6" Double X blocks with a goal of making a total of nine for a small wall hanging. 

I expanded the block layout to include Flying Geese borders and then hand quilted it all. I decided to call it Flow Blue.

I refused to buy fabric for the back so used this print from my stash. 

At first I made these Flying Geese units thinking they would be the right size for the borders on the wall hanging but they were way too small so I made a doll quilt instead. I already had the blue striped fabric and the dark black/blue print but, boy!, I really ended up fussing over this small piece. I first sewed it together without the dark strip on the far right. Never even noticed that it was missing. So ripped it all apart and added the strip. Then I thought it would be a good piece to practice machine quilting but I wasn't comfortable doing that so ended up hand quilting it. It is the first time that I ever applied a 1/4" binding. The piece measures 14-1/2" x 15-1/2."

Here is the back.

I still had some large leftover geese from Flow Blue and decided to make a composition notebook cover. I first saw these on Barb Vedder's, Fun With Barb blog where she provided the link to a tutorial on how to make them.  

This is the back.

Here's a graph paper notebook I put on the inside. I use it for sketching block designs.

The inside front cover . . . 

And the inside back cover.

It was definitely a fun project. I'd like to make a few more but will need to re-think the layouts making sure there are no seams in places where they shouldn't be like at the front and back fold-overs or at the top and bottom edges of the notebook.


__________
Copyright 2013, Barbara Schaffer