Posted by: Nancy Rink
on Nov 10, 2011
It's been quite a while since I blogged about the quilt I'm making for my upcoming book, Away From Home: Quilts Inspired by Lowell Mill Girls, (Kansas City Star Books pub). Getting ready for my first Quilt Market put things on hold for a while, but I am back at work, trying to make my November 17 deadline.
Here is the center panel all appliqued. The spool blocks are being arranged and a row of them are added to the top and bottom of the center panel.
Now it's time to arrange the border blocks I've been piecing and appliqueing. Still have a few blocks to finish.
All the blocks are done and sewn to the top. Just two more borders to go. Moved to the design floor "aka. the living room".
Loaded on my Millie. Time to quilt . . . .
. . . and quilt . . .
. . .and quilt. . . and still quilting! In this last photo you can see a little bit of the last two borders.
Posted by: Nancy Rink
on Aug 19, 2011
This week I've made some progress on the applique blocks for the the Mill Girls book. The quilt is a medallion style book and has four applique blocks at its center. Here is the main block with the applique prepped and glued in place. The "factory building" is sewn down as is the sun and the moon. All of the fabrics are from the new Mill Girls fabric collection Judie Rothermel designed especially for this quilt, plus another quilt I've designed for a block-of-the-month program with Marcus Fabrics (more on that later once I start making that quilt!)
The "brown thing" both girls are holding are shuttles, a tool used in textile manufacturing. Once I start sewing the patches down, I'll cut out the center of the shuttle patches, so it better resembles a shuttle, not a loaf of French bread.
A shuttle is a tool designed to neatly and compactly store weft yarn while weaving. Shuttles are thrown or passed back and forth through the shed, between the yarn threads of the warp in order to weave in the weft.
The simplest shuttles, known as "stick shuttles", are made from a flat, narrow piece of wood with notches on the ends to hold the weft yarn. More complicated shuttles incorporate bobbins or pirns.
Originally shuttles were passed back and forth by hand. However, John Kay invented a loom in 1733 that incorporated a flying shuttle. This shuttle could be thrown through the warp, which allowed much wider cloth to be woven much more quickly and made the development of machine looms much simpler.
Posted by: Nancy Rink
on Aug 13, 2011
After working on them for two days, I finally have the applique blocks drawn for the book on the mill girls. The quilt has a center medallion made up of four applique blocks. Then, in the border blocks that surround the medallion there is one applique block repeated eight times. There are other blocks in the border round, but they are pieced.
So now that I have my master patterns--and my fabric which arrived fresh from the factory on Friday--I'm ready to begin. There's still a lot of prep work for the applique since I like to use the freezer paper and starch method. And, it's almost inevitable that I will make changes as I work through the quilt construction. You know how it goes, sometimes a fabric you thought would look perfect, doesn't. Or you want to add something. Or subtract something.
In any case, I am so, so excited to get this project going.
Oh . . . and I've been working on another quilt for the book. It's going to be one of the additional projects. Here's a little peek at some of the stars that are going into this pink and brown beauty made from the Cocheco III collection by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Fabrics.
