The idea to make a row quilt came to me as I looked at my collection of vintage fabric scraps and blocks from the 1930s and 40s.
Fat Quarter Shop has been posting weekly blocks for their "Sewcialites" quilt and one of those designs reminded me of patchwork from the 30s. So I began there, making 6" blocks from a variety of vintage fabric pieces. Seven of them, pieced together side by side, resulted in a 42" wide row...perfect for the width of the muslin that I wanted to use.
I had a few star blocks that a friend had made from some of HER vintage fabrics. They just happened to measure 6 1/2"...I pieced some from MY vintage fabrics to complete a row of them.
There were some small 9-patch blocks in my collection. After piecing more of them, I decided that they would be more interesting on point.
Corner triangles were drafted to add to seven Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks so that they would be "squared up" to piece into a row.
Three arcs left from a Double Wedding Ring quilt that I had reassembled a number of years ago found their way into two rows, too. I cut the arcs in half and appliqued them to strips of muslin.
I have a shoe box full of small squares of 30s fabrics. Some were squared up to 2 1/2" and made into 9-patch blocks. Others were used to make scrappy pinwheels and 1/2 square triangle blocks.
It wouldn't be a 30s quilt without Scotty dogs. After they were appliqued in place, they were top-stitched with black embroidery floss.
And what about butterflies? These were appliqued in place, then bodies were added with chain stitching using 6 strands of black floss. The blanket stitching around the bodies was done with 1 strand of black floss.
I had to include a row of bow-tie blocks, too!!!
Each row was adjusted to measure 42 1/2" wide. Then all of these rows were pieced together, with spacers between the rows. The quilt now measured 72" long. But at this point, it was only 42" wide--very long and skinny. Time for side borders. These were cut 5 1/2" wide. And because I wanted Sunbonnets in this quilt somewhere, a couple of them were appliqued to this border.
The addition of the side borders brought the width to about 52" wide. This still seemed too narrow. I decided to add another 5" muslin border to each side. But just stitching those to each side would look like an "oops" to me. To solve that problem, vintage fabric strips were pieced together and stitched between the muslin borders as spacers. Now the quilt measures 72" x 62" and fits nicely on a twin bed! I really like the way it grew! :)
