Patty's Tea Towel Finish

Patty A. sent me a follow up as she just finished her Tea Towel Challenge from way back!  I still love seeing what you are finishing or making inspired from this site!  Beautiful finish Patty!!

From Patty: I finally got mine done!  Fabrics used - the waistband from a pair of Irish linen men's pants, Belgium linen, Essex cotton/linen, vintage Maremekko, shot cotton, Kaffe Fasset print, vintage drapery cotton, an Australian cotton print (binding), and a piece of hand dye shibori linen (on the back with the rest of the vintage drapery cotton).

Better late than never!

Her original posts are here:

http://www.15minutesplay.com/search?q=Patty+A.

You can still email me your finished projects...

infovfwquilts at gmail dot com 

Even though this site has gone quiet, there is oodles of good stuff here!  Feel free to browse, and always give credit where credit is due.  Thank you!

Selections by Patty

I spent some time Sunday afternoon pulling some fabric from my stash for my tea towel medallion quilt.  Here is what I have so far.  A  rust and navy Marimekko dated 1994 that I bought at an estate sale, a pair of men’s linen pants from a neighbor’s garage sale, vintage cotton floral drapery fabric that was in a garbage bag of fabric that was given to me, scarps of linen, navy cotton/linen Essex, gold shot cotton, and a linen/cotton Asian print.  I tried to pick an eclectic mix of prints that varied a bit in scale.   What do you all think? 

Patty A.

Patty's choices

Patty A. Says:
Here are the two tea towels I have had for twenty years and now it is time to make one of them into a quilt!  Zoar is a historic town in Ohio that was founded by German Separatists when they left their homeland due to religious persecution.  It was also the site of a Civil War fort and they still hold reenactments there.  The population – 169 as of 2010.   Which one should I choose?  Hum?

Patty A's quilt

I did not work on any home improvement projects this weekend.  I focused only on this piece and it felt great!  I took the waist band and zipper flap off the linen pants.  I used those pieces along with the scraps of linen in my stash to make my “made” fabric for the first border around the towels.  I just thought the towels needed a bit of space before adding the border rounds.  As in my original plan the first border was the navy and linen striped fabric.  The width of the border was determined by the width of the striped fabric I had pieced.   

The next border would be triangles using the rust print  and gold shot cotton.  I had never made improve pieced triangles in a row so this was a new technique for me.  I decided to just try and see what happened if I would layer the fabric, double cut, sort the pieces, and then piece the same way I piece strips.  I worked!   I like the way they turned out.  The quilt now measures 56” wide and 51” high so my next round will have to change the proportions so the quilt is longer than it is wide.  My original plan was to take the vintage drapery cotton fabric print and pair it with more natural linen (shown in the picture to the left of the quilt)  into  four or nine patch blocks which then would turn into a checkerboard when I sew them side by side. 

Patty's Inspirations!

I think it is so cool that all this activity goes on under the bridges!

I think the one with the white bridge with Bret Michaels.

This was a fun day I had with my brother, sister-in-law, and my nephew’s band and crew.  This was the final event of the day – getting comp tickets to see Bret Michaels.  The setting was so cool with such a beautiful old bridge gracefully arched behind him. 

Patty A.

wahoo!

I spent last evening after work focused on making the checkerboard/nine patch blocks for the next border round on the medallion tea towel quilt and I like where this is going!  I put the nine patch blocks at the top and bottom and made single pieced strips at the sides to change the proportions of the quilt so that the quilt was longer than it was wide.  I made the single strip side pieces a bit wider and I think that helps give them a bit more weight and presence.  See the skinny strip at the bottom of the right side? Too skinny.  The fatter pieces look better.  I also just threw up the two blocks at the bottom right side that still need to be sliced and sewn to see if I was digging this border.    I am anxious to start sewing the blocks into rows and attaching them.

Patty A.

Patty A's progress

 I spent a lot of time thinking about what fabrics I wanted to use in fourth pieced border.  I felt I needed to repeat the gold fabric, but I thought the natural linen would be to blah.  I just purchased a yard of the fabric with the rust circles and I thought the addition of another shape would work.   I went back and forth in my head with using the navy with the gold instead, but I thought that would be too safe and too close to the border in the tea towel.  So I went for it and here is the result.  I decided to make some made fabric from the scraps and I used the made fabric as corner blocks.   The quilt measures 71” x 78”.

Since the last border is all bias cut fabric I am thinking about adding one more border using what fabric I have left cut on the straight of grain in random cut rectangular blocks.  I pinned up some pieces to audition them.  The more I think about this the more I feel that I need to add this last border.

Patty's heart!

I took 15 minutes to play last night and made this little heart piece just in time for the deadline!  I just went to my scrap bin, gabbed the red. I saw some turquoise pieces and gathered those too.  I had a scrap of white laying on the sewing table so I used that to stamp the heart then got to sewing.  After I hem stitched all the pieces thru the batting and backing, and zig zagged the edges, I decided it was too plain. I decided to splash it with some watered down paint and this is the result.  I now have it hanging on my design wall along with many pieces I have collected from other quilters. ~ Patty A.

Patty's work in progress

For this quilt I want to use the natural colored  linen as my neutral background fabric which will tie all the fabrics together and it  is the color of the linen the towel was printed on.  I like piecing strip sets and I think they are very versatile.  I will be making a bunch of these sets using the fabrics I already picked out before I start playing around with how I want the quilt to look.  I am going for a juxtaposition of the orderly printed quilt blocks printed on the towel with improvisationally pieced borders.

I am going with the patchwork block tea towel.  I am waiting for an identical one from Brenda to come in the mail.  She saw the post of the towel on 15 minutes and volunteered to send me hers so I could sew them together and have a more square center to work with.