Thursday, November 1, 2007

Vintage Thimbleberries

As most of my friends know, I am an unabashed TB-aholic. No - no tuberculosis here... just an addiction to Thimbleberries, especially fabric lines from the past that are hard to find now. I love many of the quilts in Lynette Jensen's older books and patterns, and try my best to duplicate them - hunting down all of the 'original' fabrics to make my replications complete :) Yep, eBay has become one of my favorite websites - much to DH's chagrin - and I have been able to find MANY of the ones I 'need' for various quilts.

Lynette's old Christmas lines are some of my favorites - especially the first one she designed. The Christmas Valley line of fabrics were released back in 1995, but I didn't discover it until much later - WAY after the quilt shops had sold out of the bolts. One quilt that I fell in love with used that fabric line, and it started me on my search. The quilt is called Pine Tree Log Cabin and is featured in the At Home with Thimbleberries book. Over many years I found ALL of the original fabrics - and made this quilt top recently:

I had to make some size modifications because I only had a fat quarter of many of the fabrics. So, instead of the log cabins finishing at 8.75", they're just 7"... and the pine trees in the corner were reduced from 10" finished to 7.5". I also made only 30 log cabin blocks instead of the 40 that the pattern called for, but I'm still happy with the result. Now I just have to send it out to be quilted...

I'm currently working on a kit that I bought from MSCS while I was out in Minnesota. I just have to add the borders and it'll be ready to post here :)

5 comments:

*karendianne. said...

I can appreciate the effort you've put into find all the fabrics. I only recently started running into that with Kansas Troubles and I find it such a thrill when I find that little something that was no where to be found. Its a tresure hunt. Ths PINE TREE log cabin is lovely. Too cute. Nice work.

Kairle Oaks said...

Beautiful, beautiful, Kristie! All of your hard work collecting the fabrics really paid off!

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful quilt. I love it!!

Jo Raines said...

This is beautiful! Perfect for the holidays.

Michele said...

Beautiful Kristie! Hopefully you can get it quilted and ready to display for christmas.