Wild Geese

I've always admired 

antique doll and cradle quilts.

found on Pinterest

Their humble patterns and

the irregularity of stitching give us

a tiny glimpse into the makers.

Was it sewn with

young hands learning to hold 

 needle and cloth or

older hands, stiff from life

 lovely sewing a small quilt for someone special?

Wendy, the Constant Quilter, issued a challenge to herself

and anyone else who wanted to join in the fun,

 to make one small quilt a month.

No rules, no pressure.

Whatever path you wanted to take.

How hard would it be to make one

small quilt each month?

Well, it was definitely fun,

but more challenging than I thought.

I decided to try and reproduce

one of the many doll or cradle quilts

I'd been saving on my Pinterest board.

Here is the original quilt 

someone pinned from 

Stella Rubin's Antique Quilts.

The funny thing after I started this, I

saw Temecula Quilts was making it

their mini of the month as well.

Too funny, but definitely a sign

I was going to have fun with my first challenge.

I had no problem looking through

my stash for similar fabrics.

I wasn't sure if the tan was originally tan

or a fugitive color.

It didn't matter. I decided to go as is.

I drafted the pattern

the size I wanted it to be.  

The challenge came

trying to be more liberated in my sewing.

When you spend years trying to

perfect your sewing skills and 

then to try and be more free or loose, it wasn't as easy

as you'd think.

Here's an example

of my flying geese.

I roughly cut rectangles close to the same size,

used large triangle pieces for the background,

and came up with some good variations.

I set the rows of geese together 

without measuring

and laughed when it came out so close to

equal measurements on the opposite sides.

When I try hard, that doesn't always happen!

I handquilted it with

a small cable in the rows as well as

 the outer borders and then

 around each flying goose.

This really was a fun project.

Wild Wings

17" x 26"

New and old side by side.

Thank you, Wendy, for the mini

monthly challenge.

I hope to be trying it again soon

with another antique doll quilt.

Check out Wendy's blog, to see her

first mini and also

Barbara's blog to see what she made. 

Time to join in?

Until Next Time-

Kyle