From teatime to breakfast

Another quilter I love to follow is Kathleen Tracy, the author of several books that include both quilt-making history and patterns for small quilts. She uses predominantly 1800 Reproduction (aka Civil War) fabrics and her designs are mostly quite accessible for beginners. She has a gentle approach and a sweet homemade aesthetic which makes you feel connected to the heritage of quilting.

She began her quilting journey by making doll quilts for her daughter. So on her Facebook group she will often suggest a quick “mystery” quilt, which last weekend I decided to participate in. On Friday evening she gave the instructions to sew 14 Four Patch units. That evening she gave the next step. The following morning, the next one, and so on. By Sunday evening or Monday morning most of us had succeeded in putting together a sweet little doll quilt.

(Is there a law against having this much fun?)

And because … you guessed it! … I had many more one inch squares left over from past projects — Kathleen Tracy makes wonderful use of one inch squares! — I made a second mystery quilt, though this time I actually deconstructed (More insanity?) some blocks to reconfigure the tiny squares into rows.

This second one I started at teatime yesterday, had it put together, quilted and bound by bedtime, and early this morning, too excited to sleep in, I finished up the hand quilting on it before breakfast!

The rest of photos are some of the other Kathleen Tracy designs I’ve made, two of which did prove a challenge. One has “Prairie Points” around the outside edge: something I can say I’ve done once and will never do again, thanks. The other is the Tumbling Blocks, which I hand-pieced and will not likely repeat, either, though the experience of working with Y Seams was valuable. And I do like the 3-D effect of the blocks.

One of them is a triple Sawtooth Star (my hair-brained idea) surrounded by one inch squares.

So if you’re looking for some quick and satisfying projects — and you have tiny scraps you haven’t been able to throw away but don’t quite know what to do with — check out Kathleen Tracy. Her blog is: https://sentimentalquilter.blogspot.com