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Apr 6, 2012

Schoolhouse quilt

This quilt has a fun story!  There were four of us that made this quilt together, Nanette, Sue, Cheryl and me.  
We bought all the beige fabric and all the navy blue fabric in one cut.  I took the beige home to tea dye it.  I tea dyed it, followed all the directions, and then washed it.  The tea dye washed out!  I followed the instructions again and laid the fabric on the pavement in my driveway to dry and the tea dye disappeared.  I tried coffee and the same thing happened, the coffee color disappeared.  AAAhhhh!!! 
I guess the fabric was treated to withstand stains :)  Anyway, after a lot of frustration, I gave up and we used plain beige for our schoolhouse quilt.




The school houses and the stars were paper pieced.  Nanette did all the mathematical calculations and Sue was the one who did most of the paper piecing, I never really learned how.  Again, we mass produced the four quilts, and chose our school house blocks at the end.  We assembled the quilts together also.  
I don't think I would be able to make this quilt on my own, it was pretty complicated.  There are a couple of duplicate schoolhouses but most of them are a little different.



After quilting two quilts by hand, I opted to have this one machine quilted.  Hand quilting really hurts my fingers, even using a thimble.
My fingers get so sore that I can barely use them!




I had to search high and low for the backing fabric.  I just love the dainty roses and the beige is tea dyed.......from the factory :)






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2 comments:

  1. This is AWESOME! And you're right--perfect backing, too. Cool! Thanks for stopping by my blog today, it led me here. :-)

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  2. Congrats on completing such a lovely quilt! I adore how all the school houses are a little different and the simple navy and beige give it such a great vintagey feel. Love it!

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