A renovation project and some Wonderland quilt progress

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Last month I mentioned a vintage sewing basket and contents that I bought off Ebay. The basket has now been renovated and put to use.

"After"

"Before"

Some of the wicker work was in worse condition than I first realised so I “lined” the basket with cardboard. For the main section of the basket, I made a box shaped lining from grey/lilac canvas fabric that was lightly quilted to some headlining and glued this to the cardboard. For the basket lid, I again lined it with cardboard to which I glued a panel made using six of the “origami style” blocks made last year at a Jennie Rayment workshop hosted by Waterloo Quiters. I’m pleased to have found a use for these blocks and I think they are in keeping with some of the ornate satin linings seen on the lids of vintage sewing baskets.

Good progress has also been made on the machine pieced blocks for my Wonderland sampler quilt with 18 more blocks being completed. These all included half and quarter square triangles which I cut using Sizzix dies rather than using the instructions in the book. The blocks went together well and minimal trimming was required, though I did have to make one block oversized due to the size of the dies I had, but it was easily cut to the correct size.

The next set of blocks use “diamond in a square” for which I will be using foundation paper piecing templates.

A productive start to the year

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This month started with the arrival of a vintage sewing mystery box. Last year I bought a mystery box from Barnyarns, the contents of which were not exactly to my taste or needs. This year I spotted a charity listing on Ebay for a vintage sewing basket and contents which was half the price of last year’s box. The photos gave a hint of what was inside and I decided it was worth a go as if there was nothing of use, I could regard it as a donation to charity.

The basket arrived and it was full of a mix of sewing and knitting items. The contents included a darning mushroom, 2 rag rug hooks, 7 tape measures, 2 containers of pin, 5 thimbles, a bodkin, 10 packets of needles, various hotel sewing kits, 2 needle threader, 45 reels of thread, 1 pair of pinking shears, 10 pairs of scissors, 19 pairs of knitting needles, 2 sets of double pointed knitting needles, 8 crochets hooks, 2 knitting gauges, 3 row counters and 1 stitch holder.

It appears that the original owner was also a patch-worker as there was handmade half square triangle work bag and an EPP pin cushion, as well as two embroidered needle books.

The basket interior has seen better days, but I think it will make a good renovation project.

I was very pleased with this purchase, though the combination of a talk on Sylko threads at last year’s Festival of Quilts and several vintage reels of Sylko in the basket has started me exploring other related vintage sewing items and no doubt there will be more to report on that.

The next sewing related activity was my first trip to Waterloo Quilters of the year. This was a charity sewing day and we were making potato chip blocks for Project Linus quilts. It’s a great block to make as a group activity as there are no seams to match and it doesn’t matter which way the seams are pressed so you have plenty of opportunity for chatting and swapping of our pre-cut pieces to ensure no repeats in each block.

I’ve also made some more progress on my Wonderland sampler quilt. I’m not making all the blocks in the book and am making some changes to ones that are not quite to my liking. The last of the EPP blocks from the book have been completed and I included a mini Patchwork of the Crosses block in my selection of EPP blocks.

Sewing has also started on the machine pieced blocks. I didn’t like the very first block and have changed this to a courthouse steps block; similarly, I introduced more white fabric into the log cabin block.

The next style of blocks to make are based on half square triangles, which I cut using my Sizzix dies, so it will be interesting to see how they go together.