{"id":1555,"date":"2022-10-07T12:55:55","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T10:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2024-01-06T13:59:56","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T12:59:56","slug":"vintage-radishes-a-22-year-quilt-ufo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/07\/vintage-radishes-a-22-year-quilt-ufo\/","title":{"rendered":"Vintage Radishes: A 22-year Quilt UFO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A long time ago, I subscribed to a monthly packet of reproduction fabrics from a mail-order catalog (I told you it was a long time ago). Almost none of them got used for patchwork in the style of their era. But in the summer of 2000, when I was grooving on a new “machine-applique” class I had taken, these 1930s “flour sack” style fabrics fit an idea I had.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This is a radish. Really. Look, I never said I could draw.<\/em>
Photo from February 2021<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

My dedicated readers will recognize this quilt because I have been using bits of it as background images. Other readers will recognize the dark outline stitch with pastel fabrics as a big trend in the 20th-century Great Depression.

(It’s hard to find good images of antique quilts on the internet these days; everyone wants to sell me a new pattern or tell me to look in an out-of-print book. These puppies and bunnies<\/a> are exactly what I’m talking about here.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And–just like in the 1930s!–when I ran out of green for the sashing, I pieced scraps together. It’s only visible upon close inspection.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Close inspection<\/em>
October 2022<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After completing the top, I put it in a box to wait until I got better at fancy machine quilting. In 2000. It languished in one box or another since 2000, until one day last year when I was looking for something else.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Unquilted top.<\/em>
Photo from February 2021<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It took another seven months to give up on the idea of finding a matching fabric for the binding. I chose a plain Kona cotton. Then another six months passed before I gave up on “fancy machine quilting” and settled for straight lines in the ditch. I’m sure I’ve seen hundreds of vintage quilts in antique shops with this same philosophy: Usable is better than fancy. (The lies we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night, amirite?)

The binding is a stinknormal<\/em> double-fold binding with an attempt at mitering the corners. This is my least-favorite finish, because I can never miter more than three corners correctly, but the perfect has been the enemy of my good for too long. <\/p>\n\n\n

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[seething hate]
September 2022<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The funnest thing about the stinknormal<\/em> double-fold binding is: no matter where on the quilt I start or how long I leave the tail at the beginning, the place where I join the ends together always falls where I joined the fabric strips together to create the binding. Always.<\/p>\n\n\n

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If I tried this, I couldn’t make it happen…
September 2022<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Anyway. Here it is, on my couch with Uncle Nutsy, a squirrel I made in 2019:<\/p>\n\n\n

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Finished!
October 2022<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What UFO will fall on my head next? Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A vintage “vintage reproduction”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,20],"tags":[104,101,102],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patchwork","category-stitching","tag-calico","tag-radishes","tag-vintage"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radishthegreat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}