Old tales made new...

I am so glad I can start my weekend knowing that I have finished my charm quilt. This is the first of two I am making this year for my quilt group's theme. In case you are new to my blog or missed the entry about this...my quilt group is making charm quilts this year. We are swapping pieces to have enough to complete our projects. A charm quilt is made up of all different fabrics using a one-patch block. My quilt is made up of fabrics in shades of creams, beige's, browns, pinks, blues, greens, yellows and grays.


I decided I want to become better at machine quilting and will practice on a few of my quilts this being one of them. I am really pleased with the results this time.

At first, I debated about using blues in the quilt, but later as it came together, I found the blues added an exciting element to the whole quilt. I wanted this quilt to have an old fashioned look to it. There are 390 pieces of fabric in this charm quilt.

You can see the two directions that I quilted from the back. I quilted horizontally first and then went back and did the vertical zigzag lines of the hexagons.

Now why is this an old tale made new? I named this quilt 'Vintage Brain Training' because when you research charm quilts, you will discover that some woman made these quilts to use for their children when they became ill. They would repeat a fabric which would entertain a child who was sick in bed searching for the two pieces of like fabric print. I thought this was such a sweet story and could imagine a child searching along the patchwork for these matches. It was like the memory games or the modern day brain training computers. Why use a computer when you can sit and stare at a quilt instead? My quilt has 7 repeated fabrics and, believe me, they are not that simple to find. I love being able to tie stories of quilt history into my own quilts.

Here is a sneak peek at my weekend project. If you are curious to see what these fabrics become, stop by and visit me next week. We are off to Cranberry Cottage for the weekend. It is our 22nd wedding anniversary and we want to go out to eat at a favorite restaurant near the cottage. This will be my first stay since the New Year as my breathing problems were making it too difficult to stay there. I am looking forward to going again.

Whatever you do this weekend...enjoy it!