"Recycling" Vintage Hexie Quilts

Recycled Hexie Quilts: Using Vintage Hexagon Quilts in Today's Quilts  ins't the most gripping title but once you see Mary W. Kerr's quilts you will be hooked. I was prowling eBay looking for Hexie quilts within the hour. I have a sudden need to accumulate cutter quilts, particularly those based on hexagons!

Kerr first presents vintage quilts using Hexagon patterns, including Grandmother's Flower Garden variations, Seven Sisters Hexagon, flower baskets, floral wreathes, stars, lozenge, and mosaic diamonds. Scrappy and planned patterns are included.

Then we see 52 new quilts made with 'recycled' Hexie quilts. I already love using vintage textiles in quilts. I have, after all, 800 handkerchiefs, four drawers of old laces and trims and ribbons, a big drawer of embroidered linens, and who knows what else squirreled away.

Kerr demonstrates how to use Hexies as sashing, blocks, or borders combined with vintage embroidered linens, embroidered quilt blocks, and applique blocks. They are just wonderful!

I loved her use of cutter hexie tops as wide sashing and borders around vintage embroidered linens. A modern looking quilt can be made by floating hexie 'blocks' on a solid background fabric. She also has examples of some non-hexie recycled tops. Her examples range from pillows to bed sized quilts.

A chapter on how to work with vintage Hexie textiles can be applied to other pieced tops. Labels, quilting, and using fusibles also merit chapters. A nice step-by-step tutorial on applying crocheted doilies to a quilt is given.

The book has 148 full color photographs of inspirational quilts and is beautifully laid out.

This is not a pattern book, but you will get tips and inspiration to create your own recycled Hexie quilt project. This is a great book for the quilt guild library, too.

Mary W. Kerr is a quilt appraiser with the American Quilt Society and has published several books, teaches about vintage textiles, and restores quilts.

I received a free ebook for a fair and unbiased review.

Recycled Hexie Quilts
Mary W. Kerr
Schiffer Publishing
ISBN13: 9780764348204
$19.95 soft cover
Publication Date: April 28, 2015

Little Quilts

On Monday I visited a  quilting friend to see her quilt collection. I met Dianne on the Flickr board for Barbara Brackman's Austen Album Quilt. We both had quilts in the 2013 American Quilt Society show in Grand Rapids. She entered a hand pieced and hand embroidered quilt which included the Gettysburg Address.

Dianne Little's interest in all things fiber was evident throughout her home with her collection of antique samplers, needlework, quilts, and woven coverlets. Spinning wheels and 1830s grandfather clocks, a rope bed, and porcelain headed dolls were part of the decor.

Dianne's collection of 19th c quilt tops was delightful to see. I will share photos from her collection over the next days.

This hexagon quilt top was full of wonderful fabrics, lots of madder browns, pinks and reds, Prussian blues, and some Chrome Yellow. I am sorry I did not get a better photo of the pieced triangle border. You can just see it on the right and left sides of the quilt in the first photograph.

 Burgundy and Turkey reds pop up, as does a grayed lilac.

 There are lots of stripped fabrics, two colored and multi-colored.

 The lovely pale aqua shade in the center hexagon is unexpected.

 So wonderful that polka dots were prevalent in the mid-1800s!

 Another lovely pale aqua fabric.

+++++

I have been reading books from NetGalley, but as they are not being published until next year I can't post my reviews yet! Coming up in 2015 will be reviews on:

• West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan is fiction about F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years in Hollywood
• How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis explores how literary heroines influenced the author
• Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships that Made America by David O. Stewart considers Madison's political partnerships with Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Hamilton and his wife Dolley
• Amhurst by William Nicholson is a novel about Alice Dickinson who is writing a screenplay about Austin Dickinson, the brother of poet Emily Dickinson.
• The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer, author of The Dive From Clausen's Pier
• Behind Every Great Man: Forgotten Women Behind the World's Famous and Infamous by Marlene Wagman-Geller

Meantime I am reading Zelda by Nancy Mitford and some short stories by Michigan writer Pete Wurdock who I met at Leon & Lulu's authors fest.