Last summer, (2011), I was out in the little burg of Corbett Oregon, at one of our little quilting get togethers. I quilt with a group of about a dozen ladies, most of whom live in this tiny community in the Columbia Gorge. They not only work on projects of their own, but have a community outreach program that is about 10 years old. We operate from one of the local churches, although only one of our members is a member of the church.
Anyway...my dear sister in law, Mary, has lived out in Corbett for nearly 40 years..... and her friends have embraced me as part of their group. She is connected to many in this community through the food bank at the local grange, as well as through the volunteer fire department that my brother has been active in for as long as they've lived there.
Last summer, a community member, donated a stack of boxes to the quilting group to use foer their outreach project. In the boxes were tons of magazines, patterns in plastic sleeves, and several bags of quilt blocks, pre-cut, some stitched, some not, and some started. There were three basic color combinations in the group.... red & green..... blue, turquoise, purple and green.... and purple and gold. No instructions in any of the baggies....... I volunteered to take the blue, turquoise, purple and green stacks..... thinking I could do something with them... afterall... I had at least 4 yards of the same background fabric in my stash that was not being used......
upon closer inspection.... this person was highly ambitious, and had cut many blocks that were obviously above her piecing expertice.... lots of bias seams..... lots of points..... and since I believe they were done with templates, rather than rotary cutting, not all pieces were consistent in size. The only marking on the blocks was the name, many of them biblical in nature. The most difficult part of this was that this bundle of quilty stuff came from a home with at least one very heavy smoker... everything reaked to high heaven!
My first step was to place some fresh dryer sheets in the brown paper bags, place them into larger black plastic garbage bags and set them out in the hot sun for 3 days.... the heat of the black plastic did the trick to make it possible for me to bring the quilt pieces into the house.
As I started sorting through the blocks and pieces, I noticed three different color combinations within the color range, and I divided them into the three groups.
Then.... not all the finished blocks were the same size.... they should have been 12 1/2".... but the seam allowances were not at all consistent... so some blocks were 11"... some were 10 1/2".. AND SOME were nearly 13". I decided to make a border for each block out of the background fabric that was 3" wide. Then I twisted my ruler and cut each block on an angle to help hide the fact that it was a different size than the block next to it.
I finished up the blocks that were started, or at least most of them..... some were beyond being finished......
Then I found a fabric on a clearance table and bought all 10 yards on the bolt for 3.99 a yard.
The results yielded three quilts which I think are all very differnt from each other...
There was enough of the bubble fabric to back one quilt.... 65 x 84.... and still enough to use for borders and sashing on another one the same size.
Corbett trio #1
Corbett Trio #2 -
Corbett trio #3 -
All three tops are done... and I finished quilting #3 this week. Now if I can just keep the momentum going and get #1 and #2 done soon.....
What a beautiful job you did with the blocks. They both look great, I'm in love with the one with pink roses though.
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