I’ve used Moda 1930’s repro prints to complete two projects. The first I completed over a year ago using two charm packs to create lots of half square triangles and the second I completed last week (it was my demo quilt for the latest Beginners Class at Purple Stitches).

Last Wednesday I delved into my ‘projects’ bin looking for something to take to the following days sewing social. I found the little bag of left over 30’s Playtime fabrics by Chloes Closet for Moda along with a quarter metre of Kona Snow… Hum! I like the bright but not ‘in your face’ colours of the fabrics and the way they lend themselves to traditional patchwork layouts.
Time to check out my patchwork block bible, Judy Hopkins’ ‘501 Rotary-Cut Quilt Blocks’ and EQ7’s block library. I settled on a block called Carrie Nation. I’d never heard of the American temperance campaigner Carrie Nation and her famous hatchets – Barbara Brackman provides a fascinating history here and there’s a block tutorial by Delaware Quilts here. 

After a bit of fiddling about on EQ7 I modified the block, substituting half square triangles for some of the larger squares in the block.

My collection of 30’s Playtime fabrics included quite a few 10″ layer cake squares, an assortment of 5″ charm squares and a complete set of 2½” squares (won in a local quilt group raffle 🙂 ) as well as a couple of larger pieces of fabric. To create the least amount of waste from the pre-cuts I chose to make the finished size of the HST and the four patch units 4″ square. This makes the finished size of the blocks a whopping 16″ so just sixteen blocks required to make a 64″ square quilt top. Add a border or two and the finished quilt is likely to finish up at about 70″ square.
I took all the 30’s fabrics to the sewing social and enjoyed sorting them into colour groups and making a few HST and four patch units to create one block.


Of course, I discovered that I will need to purchase more of the printed fabrics to complete the quilt top along with a metre or more of the background fabric! Funny how I end up buying more fabric in order to use up my stash 😀 I’m hoping to make a pieced backing, using all the leftovers.
There are a few squares of pre-cut fabrics from the 30’s Playtime range that I’m puzzling over. I’ve never felt able to introduce the fabrics with black backgrounds into my projects so I have a small assortment of these squares and no idea what to do with them. Do you have any suggestions?
 
Linking with Sandra at Musings of a Menopausal Melon for the 10th DrEAmi (Drop Everything And Make It) virtual get together. I’m beginning to think the majority of my projects fit into the DrEAmi category! Why do I write out a list of planned projects when I so often scurry off and make things that never make it on to a list? (Blush – maybe some do end up on the list of UFOs…).
Allison