Weaver Fever

Today was a day to get some order in some parts of my house. My sewing room is upstairs, but no one lives up there anymore. Of course, the sewing room pretty much stays a mess, and periodically I try to straighten up and actually run the sweeper & dust. I decided that the other rooms were in much worse shape than my sewing room and went to work on them. It looks pretty nice up there now. Cleaning up and remaking the beds reminded me that I did make another QS quilt last year, so I decided to post it as I likely won't get much sewing done today. Please don't pay any attention to the blue bedskirt. This room is used about 5-7 days a year, so there's not much need to do much decorating. Eventually, maybe... The pattern is called 'Weaver Fever' and believe me, it lives up to its name. Because of the complexity of the design, with seams every inch, I knew I wouldn't handquilt it, so I had it machine quilted with an allover design. I found the grape fabric just as I was finishing up the top, and it just brought the whole thing together for me. I hadn't decided on backing fabric, but I knew I wanted a color, and with a green and purple pieced design, I didn't know what to get. The grapes introduced red, which led me to the 1/4" folded border and the quilt back. I'm really pleased with how it came out. Believe me, these colors together are really outside my 'comfort zone' but I like it. The mail brought me a book yesterday, "Dear Jane The Two Hundred Twenty-Five Patterns from the 1863 Jane A Stickle Quilt", by Brenda Manges Papadakis. So for two hours before bedtime, I read the book, looked at the drafted blocks, and examined the pictures of the actual blocks. It's an exceptional quilt; it's hard to imagine that one woman did all that work, probably all by hand. I'm going to try to make some of them. They're such small blocks (4 1/2 inches) that I think they'll be perfect to do by hand; something to put in baggie and carry with me. I'm hoping to cut out several and take them to the beach to work on. After seeing pictures of the original, and because the quilt comes from that era, I think I'll make it in Civil War reproductions. I'm sure I won't try to make the whole thing, but the blocks are just fascinating.