When I was in high school, I decided to make a sunbonnet girl quilt. So I carefully cut the little skirt, bodice, bonnet and parasol pieces out of a few pieces of fabric from my mother's scrap heap. The only problem was, I had no idea how to applique the bits onto the backings. I thought I could just zigzag around the pieces, but this was in the days before Wunder-under, and I couldn't get it to work. If I were doing it again, today, I'd have the sense to cut the pieces larger so I could turn down the edges, but it was too late.
So I put the little pieces away in an envelope and forgot about them.
A couple of years ago, I found the envelope. By that time lots of the pieces were lost, but there were enough to put together these sixteen blocks, this time by using fusible backing carefully trimmed to fit the pieces. I added arms and legs and parasol handles, and to make it all politically correct, various shades of skin tones.
But I didn't like the fact that the raw edges of the ladies' pieces would be exposed. And I was a little unhappy at the stiffness using the fusible webbing caused, but there was nothing I could do about that.
To protect the figures, I covered each block with the sheerest organza I could find, then carefully machine-stitched around the outside of each stuck-on piece. It took forever. The organza worked so well, I decided to add a couple of doilies and some pieces of crochet I never got around to making into a table cloth. Instead of machine stitching, I tacked the organza down around the lace with invisible thread.
This quilt is machine quilted. I was moving just as I finished it, and building a new house, and just didn't have time to hand quilt it.
J.
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