Maybe You Guys Can Help

I know a lot of you collect vintage things and most of my readers are spread all over the world, so maybe someone has some tip about the following strange strange discovery I made last Sunday.


My weekend breakfasts usually include boiled eggs, I grew up that way, so I have quite a variety of egg cups.

I own 3 egg cups that I remember from when I was very little and that were purchased in Europe as far as I know.




The last one is my absolute favourite, still, and I always use it for breakfast.

Now, you can just imagine my confusion when I was doing dishes at a friend's house in Nova Scotia, a province just south of PEI, still Canada, and found myself washing the eggcup shown below.

I suffered from momentary loss of my sense of location. I must be home if I'm washing my favourite egg cup, right???

Guess not. Guess you could by the exact same eggcup in Canada as in Europe about 30 or so years ago. Apart from the gold ring around the base on my own eggcup and slightly unsteady hand by whoever painted my parent duck (the wobbly bit on the beak), these are identical.

How strange is this??? I'm going to look into this a bit more! I'm already bombarding my friend's and my own parents with questions where they got the eggcups.

I just thought, maybe these are common as dirt, otherwise it would be such a coincidence that my friend owns the same eggcup. So I'm wondering, have you ever seen an eggcup with any of the motives in the photos above?

Back to a quilty post soon!!!

Viewer's Choice!

I finished all my units for the mystery quilt for the quilt guild!



However, I don't like the layout for my colour choices, it actually gives me a headache to look at even if it doesn't quite show in the photo. Anyway, I've played around with the units a bit. The first one is the original layout, I'll number them, and if you could comment on which layout you like best, I'd appreciate some input! I have a personal favourite, but don't want to bias you. A couple of the layout changes are really subtle, just 4 blocks turned around for example, but there are no double photos, I checked! Thanks :)

1. Original
2. White hour glasses3. Corner units turned around
4. Hour glass alternative

5. Green circle with multi-coloured center

Another Quilting Question

First of all, thanks for all the great tips on fraying fabrics. I don't have pinking shears, but might give those a try, because unfortunately, even after hundreds of meters of fabric, I'm still a staunch pre-washer and ironer. I was everything to avoid not only running fabrics, but also shrinkage and to get any chemicals out that the materials were treated with. I've been told that clothing is usually treated with chemicals and should be washed before wearing it the first time to avoid sensitization. It's probably a rare case, but having clean fabric that smells like fresh laundry is nice. And I love the ironing (especially smaller pieces, ironing 5m of backing fabric is no fun at all) - it gives me a chance to look at the fabric again in more detail.

So, to my new question:

I'm working on a baby quilt made of triangles (first time working with triangles, really). Photos to come this week, promise!! I'm having fun with this one and it's coming along quickly.

My only question so far is, when you sew 4 squares made of triangles (HSTs they're called, I think) together so that all the tips meet in the middle, it's a pretty decent lump of seams. I ironed the first seam in the HST toward the dark fabric, and still did the iron-to-one-side on the first set of squares I sewed together. Should I have ironed it open? You'd still have the same number of layers in the end, I guess.

Will this be a problem when I quilt and should I just avoid those lumps? If anyone has a tip, I'd love to incorporate it now before it's too late!

Help! I'm All Frayed!

Remember all the pretty fabrics I bought Saturday? Well, I couldn't wait to wash them so that I can start using them...


Now look at this mess:

I could hardly get the pieces out of the washing machine everything was so tangled up together.

Does anyone have ANY tips about stopping fabrics from fraying? I've tried rounding off the corners before, but it didn't seem to make a difference unless there's a specific way of cutting the corners...

If any of you can help me avoid this mess in the future, I'd be so grateful!

(that must be a couple of inches worth of fabric there!!!)

Desperate Fabric Search

So, after browsing countless online stores, all my local stores and even approaching some quilters I know around here, I am wondering:

Have any of you ever come across quilt fabrics that have the following on them:

• cheese (I'm envisioning yellow cheese blocks with holes, but at this point anything goes)

• books - e.g. a row of book spines or open books with text

• tropical beaches - I want something with blue water, sand, a palm tree, maybe a beach chair or towel. Around here, all I get are temperate beaches with lighthouses. It has to be tropical though. I've come across a couple of prints online but didn't like the style very much.

• a dancing couple (preferably in South American dress, e.g. tango style)

• yellow or red tulips (I thought this one would be easy, but so far I've found every other flower on the planet but tulips)

• windmills (the old style ones, not energy generating ones)

• divers - with SCUBA tank, snorkel, fins, swimming under water would be nice but not necessary.

If you know where I could buy any of these and could let me know I'd be very very grateful.

Also, if any of you have a piece of suitable fabric, I would love to swap them - maybe I have some fabric that you would like? I only need a small piece (depends on the scale of the print) thanks to the quilt pattern I'm making (based on this quilt). So maybe anything from 5x5" to 7x7" (for larger prints).

I'm starting to be desperate as I'm missing some of the main themes for the character quilt and would like to get started. My friend is planning on moving across the Atlantic this year and it would be a wonderful going-away gift.

Haha, I just realized that it's pretty mean of me to ask for help right AFTER I blog about how generous and helpful quilters are *grins*. I guess Ginny's generosity gave me the idea, really, that I might be able to find and trade some of these difficult-to-get fabrics.

I hope that someone out there has a patch of those fabrics left and would like to trade!!!!

I'm already envisioning how awesome a quilt would be that has such a story of a quest and outside-help behind it; a quilt where I can say: "This fabric came from XY in Connecticut, and this one from Ontario, and this one from France." Ah, just day-dreaming!

Ball of Despair (Help!!)

Ah, the more I look at my last entry, the more I'm horrified about the quilt top. What was I thinking? If you have suggestions how to save this that don't involve undoing the soccerball quilting I've completed already or unpinning the rest of the quilt, they'd be incredibly welcome.

Maybe I could gift it anonymously??? ... ??

Weird Fabric Warning

So, while ironing the blue-ish fabric in the center, I noticed a warning on the selvage:

"Do not use for children's sleepwear"

Why in the world not? Does anyone know the reason for this strange warning? Is the fabric poisonous or something?

Some Pink Strategy-Rethinking? Help please!

After a productive Sunday, I have finished sewing 9-patches (or so I thought... either I lost 3 along the way or miscounted...)


Ironed them into a much smaller pile...


And assembled the existing blocks on the floor...


Now, looking at this pre-quilt, I'm thinking that maybe I made the squares too small for a disappearing 9-patch? They're only cut to 4" square so by the time I've cut the 9-patches and sewn them back together, I'm looking at 3.5" squares with 1.5" squares and 1.5"x3.5" strips in between. Hmm. I wonder if it will be too busy?

I've come up with a few options:

1. leave as is, as classical patchwork quilt
2. continue disappearing 9-patch and hope it'll turn out somehow
   
3. leave every second patch a normal 9-patch
   
4. leave just a few blocks as normal 9-patches throughout the quilt

Any comments on those suggestions, or entirely different ideas to make all this work worth it in the end?