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Old Nine - I Love Nine Patches

Old Nine - I Love Nine Patches

Written by: 
tvonderschmitt
Published: 
Aug 17 2016 - 04:00

Good morning!  I’m so excited to be with you today to share my Old Nine quilt – it’s in the brand new “I Love Nine Patches” book from Martingale.

me-and-quilt

I was asked to tell you a little bit about myself so… I grew up in Indiana and owned a quilt shop named Needle in the Haystack before moving to Texas in 2012. I work in the Marketing Department at Moda with a group of super-talented, creative women – best. job. ever.   My primary responsibilities are overseeing our kit program and working on “special projects”.

When I was asked to be a part of the I Love Nine Patches book,  I knew right away that I wanted to recreate one of my antique quilts.  I’m not sure when or why I started collecting old quilts but I know I enjoy having them.  As you might know, they’re addicting and you can’t have just a few!   My all-time favorite color is blue, and I love anything and everything Americana.  So when I spied this old quilt with tiny piecing and lots of scraps while antique “junking”, I couldn’t pass it up.  I also love that it looks well-loved.

When I started working on my version of the quilt, I hung the antique in my sewing room and tried to be guided by the colors in each block.  There are probably a couple of places where I changed the color a bit but mostly, it’s pretty close.

old-quilt-detail-ct

I had a great time going through my scraps to pull out fabrics that I thought would get the look I wanted – blues, reds, browns, greens, tans, pinks, and even purples for my tiny nine-patches. When I finish a project, I usually down the leftover fabrics into 1 ½” 2 ½”, 3 ½” and 4 ½” strips or squares.  Then I store them in plastic bins for projects just like this one.

The 1 ½” strips are my favorite size by far.  I keep the strips in plastic shoe boxes sorted by color, and the 1 ½” squares look pretty stored in a Ball canning jars.

Are you a scrappy quilt-maker? If so, how do you store your scraps?

For my alternate squares and border, Moda's Pure & Simple Wovens were great.  They were the right color, they’re very soft and they look like old-fashioned homepuns and tickings.

fabric

While sewing for myself and for Moda, I’ve learned that it pays to be organized when sewing a lot of small pieces.  So I line up what I need to sew and stack the pieces so I keep them in the right order.

cut-sew-3-ct

The quilting on the antique quilt is a design called “Hanging Diamonds”.  There are straight lines going vertically – spaced a little more than 1” apart.  Then there are diagonal lines going just one way.  I loved the simplicity of it so I duplicated that quilting on my quilt.  Laid side-by-side, the two quilts look like twins.

side-by-side-ct

In a few years, I know my new “Old Nine” will have the same well-loved look as the antique.

Since I know I'm not the only one who loves nine-patches and scrappy quilts, I'm going to share three copies of this great book.

CT-I-Love-Nine-Patches

Leave a comment by Midnight on Sunday, August 21, and you're entered to win.  You can tell me how you sort and store your scraps!  (Winners will be notified via e-mail.)

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Posted in: 
Books and Patterns
Tagged: 
I Love Nine Patches, Martingale, Old Nine, Patchwork, Pure & Simple Wovens, quilting, quilts, scrap quilts, Sewing, Storing Scraps, Tammy Vonderschmitt

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