Broken Dishes Doll Quilt

 

The blocks in this quilt are 4" square and the quilt itself is 16" x 20".  It was a fun little quilt to make!

Here are close up photos of some of the blocks.  

More Patterns

I'd forgotten I had these patterns until I looked at Kathleen Tracy's webpage (Country Lane Quilts) and saw them listed for sale as individual patterns.  I'd bought them a couple of years ago as part of a doll quilt club which is, alas, no longer available, although individual patterns still can be purchased.  She also offers some free doll quilt patterns on that site.  Take a peek!

January, 2013 Small Quilt of the Month

January is chose-your-own pattern month for the Small Quilt of the Month 2013 challenge.  I went for Broken Dishes from Prairie Children and Their Quilts by Kathleen Tracy because it's an easy pattern and I'm almost out of time!  I like an alternative setting she showed in her blog better than the quilt in the book and that's what I used. You can find it here.  It helps that it also requires piecing fewer blocks.  

Of course, I used some of my new scraps along with some of my old ones!  Here are some I pulled to audition.  I didn't use them all and added quite a few others.  I'm piecing the blocks now, I've found a good setting fabric for the alternate blocks, and am searching for a good border fabric.  I really, really want to make this quit in time for the deadline so I'd better get busy!  Stay tuned!

Scrap Fabrics!

I don't have enough fabric!   Ummm...well, actually I do.  I have boxes and boxes of it, but I am a strong believer that it's not possible to have too much fabric and I don't always have the right fabrics.  So what did I do last week?  Well, I headed over to Homestead Hearth and purchased three of their remnant bags.  Each bag contains one pound of fabric, about 2 1/2 - 3 yards.  And these are not tiny little scraps either!  They're wonderful to expand your stash and inspire more quilts.  I bought three of them.  I chose the 1800 repro fabrics; the other choices are contemporary florals and prints or a combination of the two.  When I bought them there was a delay of 7-10 days because so many people had ordered them.  The delay is now listed as 21-28 days, but it is well worth the wait.  I know I'll be back for more.

Here's a sample:

Notebooks and Plans

I love Kathleen Tracy's little doll quilts, have most of her books and patterns (Country Lane Quilts), and subscribe to her blog and her Small Quilts Yahoo group.  Earlier this month she had a post about a challenge to make 12 quilts--one a month--this year.  I liked her week by week plan although I'm not sure I could follow it consistently.  I also like using notebooks to help manage everything.  I love writing and I'm teaching myself to draw and I collect notebooks and, after rummaging through my desk, found quite a few I could use.

What would help me be more productive is a schedule although not one that goes too far ahead.  Every once in a while I come across long lists of quilts I wanted to make written twenty or thirty years ago and see that I actually made very few of them.  Oh, I've made a lot of quilts all right, but not the ones on the lists. It seems once I wrote them down I then promptly forgot all about them. 

I did organize my stack of little quilts yesterday and discovered some I'd totally forgotten about and found  others that needed to be repaired.  I also realized I didn't have quite as many as I thought because I've given so many away.  

Maybe I'll just try to think one doll quilt ahead and see how that goes.  I have a lot of interests--gardening, reading, and knitting being the most time consuming ones after quilting--and have a tendency to flit from one project to the next plus I work two or three days a week.  It's not unusual for me to be reading four or five books--fiction and non-fiction both--at the same time, working on several knitting projects--preemie hats, two scarves, a hat to give as a gift--, and, of course, quilts.  Right now I'm piecing three full sized quilt tops and have one in the frame that I'm hand quilting.  Yes, I love the process best of all but it's nice to actually get a project done once a while.  The only thing that's saving me this month is that it's January and I can't garden.  Of course, that doesn't stop me from dreaming over seed catalogs!

The First One

The first doll quilt I made wasn't a doll quilt.  It was a bear quilt.  My four little boys used it to wrap their stuffed animals, in particular this one, Honey Bear.  This quilt has to be well over 20 years old, probably older.

The pattern is from From the Prairie: A Child's Memories by Joan Vibert and Linda Brannock, published in 1984.  There were a series of these books based on the fictional world of a little girl named Sarah Jane who lived on the Kansas Prairie in the 1800s.  The introduction to this book starts

The year is 1883.  Eight year old Sarah Jane lives with Ma and Pa and baby Molly in a small cabin on the ever expanding Kansas prairie.  Their cabin is shared with an orange kitty named Muffie.  Sarah Jane's childhood is full of hard work but between the chores she has happy times that are filled with love and wonder. These are the times she writes about in her diary.

I made dolls, quilts, pincushions, and ornaments from these books and loved reading the diaries.  What fun memories!

Number 33

Earlier today I stacked up all the doll quilts I've made and counted them.  There were 32.   There were a couple with loose bindings and I repaired those.

I had started another doll quilt a few days ago, this one called Simply Sweet, a QAL on Cheri's website.  But I didn't like the on point setting and that setting made it bigger than I like a doll quilt to be so I just set the blocks without any other blocks or sashing.  This is what I ended up with.  It's 16" x 20".


I've been distracted the past year with one son's big wedding this past summer and making a quilt and knitting little items for my new granddaughter, Violet Grace.   I've also been knitting socks and scarves and working on full sized quilts. But I have been neglecting making doll quilts.  It's time to go back to that.