Can I Get A Whoop Whoop? Vintage Made Modern!

 

Hi, all!

Wow!  Is it Friday again already?  Well, we all know what that means - it's time for us to get our whoop whoop on!  I'm ready, and I hope you are too - so let's go!

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I think I've mentioned that my husband's cousin sent me some vintage embroidered blocks - I say vintage, but they are really only about 28 years old.  They were made for a baby quilt for her son, but circumstances arose and the blocks got put away without being used.  Her son is all grown up now, but the blocks are still in really good condition, so she asked if I could do anything with them.

When I received them, it turned out to be thirteen blocks I could square up to 8.5", and one block that would square up to 10.5".  Fourteen blocks was a conundrum - how could I turn this into a quilt?  There was no logical way to turn it into a symmetrical quilt, and I sat at my worktable staring at the blocks and wondering what to do with them.  Then I saw a jelly roll I bought a while back - The Lookout by Jen Kingwell - and noticed that the colors in the jelly roll echoed the colors in the embroidery really well. I contacted our cousin and showed her what I had and she gave me the go-ahead to do whatever I thought best.

Now I will admit to having had a shortage of quilting mojo lately - quilting what I needed to, but not really feeling it.  But I got an idea for this quilt and grabbed the graph paper....

...and here's what I came up with!  I planned to border each of the embroidered blocks with 2.5" strips, then lay them out with continuous strips behind them so that they appear to be "floating" on the stripes behind.  

And I'm so happy to say that it worked!  I love the way this turned out - bright and cheerful and just a little modern.  You can see the pretty embroidery in the following close-up shots of each quarter of the quilt....

I had a lot of fun with the quilting, too!  I wanted to do something different, so I did pointed swirls with flower petals (thank you, Christina Cameli!) in the striped areas, and smaller pointed swirls in the background of the embroidered blocks.

...and after a good productive morning spending quality time with Jolene (my quilting machine), I finally put in the last stitch!

I always love to see the quilting on the back, too...

Such lovely texture!  And now it's all ready to go back to our cousin to be loved and cherished!

So - - - can I get a whoop whoop?

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And now it's your turn!

What's got you whooping it up this week?

What's making you do a little happy dance?

Share!  We want to dance right along with you,

And it's always more fun to dance with friends!

The party will stay open until Sunday midnight.

Hope to see you there!

Hugs!

Sarah