Another Anna admirer's quilts

A while ago, I blogged about quilts by Anna Williams and heard from another Anna quilt admirer, Ethel White. Inspired by Anna’s style, Ethel made a series of quilts from her husband's discarded shirts. She has a passion for working with scraps of fabric and over the years she has saved about 50 of his shirts.


Ethel wrote that she started with the log cabin or housetop quilt above first. With scraps left over from that, she started to work on this quilt (below).

Ethel has not named these quilts yet. For this quilt she used the collars, cuffs, sleeve plackets and yokes from the collar. Once she sewed a row of strips together, she trimmed them to size (whatever was larger - example 3.5" or 5" strips). With whatever was left over, she would start another row. Her husband said this one was his favorite because it has a nostalgic look. (Ethel said she likes them all.)

Ethel said she worked with these shirts, “as if this was all the fabric I had and I tried to put myself back in the olden days to see how I would utilize what I had to make utilitarian quilt.”

“All of the quilts that I have made from the shirts except the shoofly and the nine patch I would start from the center and work my way out until I got the length and width I wanted,” Ethel wrote.

Here is the quilt she made with a traditional shoo fly pattern:

About her own style, Ethel wrote: “I'm a string quilter, our pattern is to take a square of any size and start on the diagonal of the block with a long string and sew another on top of that one, we call it sew and flip.”

Both Ethel and I have searched for the 1995 AQS book about Anna Williams. We’d love to see it republished someday: Anna Williams: Her Quilts and Their Influence. 

Ethel sent pictures of more of her quilts last week. Thanks, Ethel, for sharing with all of us. I'll post more soon. Thanks also to Ethel's photographer, Nadja.

My yellow 9-patch blocks

The sewing project I worked on at the retreat was one I have wanted to tackle for a long time.

I bought some old quilt blocks at an antique shop a while back. They were not fancy but the colors appealed to me. I wanted a quilt from those yellows, blues and pinks. Trouble was, the blocks were not the same size. I puzzled for quite a while over how to set them together.

As I saw pictures of more quilts made by Anna Williams, I decided her technique would work for these blocks. I could treat the blocks as the center, then add sashing, then add another border of scrappy piecing. I have been collecting fabrics to use in this quilt for a while (from my stash, garage sales, thrift shops).

I took them to the retreat and started to work. I didn't measure anything, I just cut strips to border the blocks. I pieced together smaller scraps and trimmed them into strips when they were long enough to become the next border.

The blocks went together more quickly than I'd hoped. I finished 9 of them so far, I plan to finish 12 total. I'll add sashing as I stitch them together, then figure out the border.

Here is my workspace at the retreat. I'm afraid it frightened a few of the more orderly stitchers. 

Catching up after a week in the sun

I spent the last week at a quilt retreat in California, right by the San Francisco bay. Internet access there was so slow that I just shelved the blog and sewed. We hiked and ate very good food too, laughed a lot and enjoyed the company of about 70 other quilters.

I'll share some stitched things I liked in the next few blogs.

This was the view out the window from my workspace. It is the sign above the gate to the Y camp's lovely garden. A year ago raised beds were being constructed there - now it is full of all sorts of good veggies.

This sun is painted at one garden entrance.

Ice plant is common on the hills where we hike. Sunlight changes how it looks at different times of the day. It can look like the plant is glowing!

It is a very welcome break from a Kansas winter.

Purely 1960s

This is a fun one: purely 1960s. This quilter made the most of the fabrics available at that time. It's pieced with classics that we all started quilting with but some very fun clothing fabrics as well. Seersuckers, a little polyester, big prints, small prints: it's all there.

This quilt measures 56" x 85". It contains 24 - 12 1/2" blocks. The center log cabin squares are all different fabrics. The blocks are surrounded by a border pieced of varied of fabrics. An open seam reveals a heavy woven blanket is inside. The backing is white. One portion of it is a satiny fabric, the rest is an upholstery fabric, turned to the front to bind it. All that adds up to make this another heavy quilt. It's tied with orange yarn.

Here's a detail:

Big Plaid Blocks

This quilt is the polar opposite of our scraps too small to save experiment.

It's big blocks stitched together in rows. Very basic, kinda fun. With a big honking piece of yardage taking up one total end. It's sturdy. You can imagine someone thinking this could take rough use.

It measures 58" x 77". The fabrics are cottons, old clothing scraps OR used clothing. Note the detail shot, that is a pocket (stitched closed). The quilt is machine quilted in simple horizontal rows about 5-6" apart. The fabric is all turned to the back and it is bound there. I found it at the wonderful antique store at Scranton, Kansas (next door is a restaurant that serves fried chicken dinners).

This quilt has a surprise waiting for us. I was sewing a sleeve on the back the other day so I could hang it to photograph. I was at stitch group listening to a story and as I gazed at the quilt, I noticed rows of diagonal hand quilting on the back.

WAIT A MINUTE. Those don't show up on the front so you know what that means. There is an old quilt inside. I will take this quilt down today and start opening seams so we can find out what is inside. There is always hope that some life-altering kind of moment awaits, when we find the holy grail of quilts inside. Most likely it is a worn out old quilt.

We will see.....

More Scraps Too Small to Save

I'm always on the lookout for odd stitched items in antique shops.

Imagine my delight when I found this a few years ago in Scranton, Kansas.

Some thrifty soul stitched scraps together and made this little potholder. The back is feedsack fabric.
It measures ~5" x 7".

One Christmas I made these for gifts.
It's another excuse to save scraps others say are too small to save......

(Could there be?) Scraps Too Small to Save

I am of the opinion that there are few scraps too small to save. As evidence, I present Exhibit A (right). Please note the dime - it is there to prove the little pieces you see really do measure ~1/4" square. I will either save this piece and combine it with others to make a larger small quilt OR turn it into a coaster (they make great gifts).

I keep a basket of scraps by my sewing machine. Whenever I come to the end of a row of stitching, I stitch together scraps.

There are several reasons to do this:
1. It doesn't waste thread.
2. It is thrifty.
3. It provides endless entertainment as you play with ways to put the scraps together.

SO it is rare that I throw away scraps. And I note other quilters have this same tendency. Some of these improvisational quilts I collect are at their most interesting when someone slips in an extremely small scrap.

So I pose that question to you - what do you do with your smallest scraps?