Inspiration Series: A stack of rectangles

Don’t let antique cross stitch pieces go to waste!

My heart breaks a little every time I see an embroidered or cross stitched piece discarded in an antique booth. Presumably, the vendor found it at an estate sale, yard sale, Ebay, what have you. No matter, it was discarded most likely by descendants of the person who made it. I like to give those who discarded the piece the benefit of the doubt: maybe they appreciated the work that went into it, but perhaps they just didn’t know what to do with it. It can be overwhelming rifling through a loved one’s belongings after they have passed. If the piece is reasonably priced, and if I’m in the mood to buy…it’s coming home with me!

lesson learned with yellow

I found the fabric for this wall hanging in my mom’s fabric stash. She is also a quilter and she is always happy for me to rummage through her fabric and relieve her of her load. (Lucky me!) I saw this discarded stack of rectangles cut roughly 3″ x 6″ inches. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I liked the colors and I knew I wanted to put them to use. When I got home, I let them marinate in my sewing room for some time while I figured out how to incorporate them into a quilt. It dawned on m not long after that I had a cross stitch piece I thought would go perfectly with the rectangles. Also, I wanted to experiment with other vintage textile pieces as embellishments, such as the doilies attached.

Insider Info

I started by placing the cross stitch on top of a piece of muslin and cutting the size down to a size I could work with. I cut some of the rectangles in half and then chain stitched them together, end to end. Then, I went around and around the cross stitch feature, much like you would piece a log cabin quilt. After piecing it all together, I made the quilt sandwich and stitched in the ditch for quilting.

Now for the fun part – embellishing! I topstitched down the ric-rac, which is all one piece, folded at each corner and simply cut at the end. The strategically placed buttons cover it up! What is not strategically placed are the crochet doilies and yo-yos. I placed these where I thought the quilt top needed some interest and texture. I tacked them down by hand with matching thread, only going through the top layer, not all the way to the back of the quilt. If you do something like this, don’t overthink the placement of embellishments.

I struggled with the yellow fabrics in this piece. Yellow always stumps me. To me, it is a color that always stands out. Hindsight: I wish I had used those yellow pieces just to frame the cross stitch, or perhaps grouped together behind one of the doilies.

Never mind the regrets, this quilt was fun to make. Embellishments are a creative way to add uniquity to a quilt.

Walt whitman

“Simplicity is the glory of expression.”

Embellishments don’t have to be valuable. I purchased this cameo at a craft supply store.

Instructions for making yo-yos.

how fun!

A great tutorial for using vintage doilies in a quilt