The Old Farmhouse Gathering: sewing

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Tuesday Tutorial with Karen of Buttons in the Attic

A Galaxy of Stars by Karen of Buttons in the Attic

I love the look of cutter quilts on prim items and while I love the look, I am loathe to cut up antique quilts, so I make my own! I just tear up strips of fabrics and utilize my scraps to make them. I am working on Christmas stars made from green and red ticking and here are piles of torn fabric to make the cutter quilts for the stars--

Cutter quilt ideas--I love playing around with the strips--do I do planned combinations or just let them happen as they may??

Here are a couple of finished ticking stars, just waiting to be tea stained and dried.

Here they are quilted up! I used my free motion foot to do the quilting with--I thought that the randomness of the stitches really added to the 'primness' of the cutter quilts. I could just imagine a mom on the farm hurriedly stitching up a quilt to keep her family warm, wishing for the time and resources to create a master piece, such as a Baltimore quilt, and dreaming of the time when life would slow a bit so she could ply her needle at her craft.

Then, after stitching the cutter quilt sections, I traced the smaller star on the back of the cutter quilt pieces to make them more random in shape and fabric placement. Here are some of the red, green and patriotic stars after they were cut out and are ready to sew onto the ticking stars!

Here the ticking stars with the patchwork stars stitched on, waiting to be tea-dyed.

Here they are after being dunked in my tea-dye solution, waiting to be baked to prim perfection! I like to use a rather strong solution of tea and I bake my items at 200 degrees, turning every 10-15 minutes or so, until dry. I like to lay drier pieces against ones that are still damp to get water marks, as if they had been in a chest or box that had gotten damp over the years.