My "Old" Quilting Project

I inherited a wonderful red and white fine linen toile panel from my mother. It's dated 1959 by Williamsburg Restoration, Inc.

I absolutely love toile fabrics. I have a guest room featuring rose toile fabrics, and plenty of mismatched red and white transfer ware (looks like toile) china in the kitchen. I've always wanted to make a quilt with this panel as the centerpiece. Even the old poem about Charlie is included and printed on the panel.

I can just see myself bringing out my Featherweight or my 99K and sewing up the quilt top on it (after I design it, of course.)

I had a wonderful opportunity to buy coordinating fabrics during my very recent trip to Keepsake Quilting while on a teaching trip to Boston. Talk about sensory overload of so many bolts of fabrics but I rose to the challenge (who wouldn't??) and started piling up bolts. Terry, who's worked at Keepsake Quilting for at least 10 years, helped me after I decided which ones to buy. She had a wonderful way of stacking up the fabrics (after folding them back and forth at the 18" mark), laying the next one on top of the other the same way and on to the next. She only had to make one cut with the rotary cutter to cut them all at the same time. What a great way to do it!

Then she carefully folded up the whole lot and tucked in the corners so each fabric showed...easy to see and make more choices.

  I added two pre-cut rolls from a nearby bin. These fabrics will look perfect with the Bonny Charlie Toile!!

And to top it all off, they put my fabrics and other purchases into a bag and tied it with a fabric strip (goes into my scrap bag for further use!) How clever and perfect!!

Now all I need is some time to finish my drawings of the quilt and figure out the block sizes. What's your next quilting project?