REAL 30s and Apologies to Ms. Burns

Several years ago, an acquaintance gave me these REAL 30s scraps. She had been making humongous quilts at her church from towels, drapes, sheets, bedspreads, for disaster victims to be sent overseas, and these little scraps were unsuitable.

There are all sizes, a few little blocks, bodices cut out and thrown in the collection. Over the years, I’ve become more and more envious of anyone who can claim their 30s scraps are REAL, – I’ve lovingly oogled them.

For some time, I’ve wanted to make a Rocky Road to Kansas, and finally, the time has come. Now, there are several ways to make this block, but I chose this way, from Eleanor Burns book, Egg Money Quilts. The good part is that her templates (in the book) are made from thick cardboard, and you can draw around them.
The kink in this choice is this long thin background triangle that has to be .... uhhhh ... set in - yes, that unpleasant method of getting a triangle into an inside angle.

I string pieced the bits onto telephone book pages, cut oversize, the approximate size of that large triangle, then trimmed to correct size of large triangle.

(By the way, I DID purchase the center triangle fabric, to be sure I had enough for all the blocks.)


I saw Eleanor Burns do this block on TV and couldn’t believe it, when she started at the OUTER tip of the string pieced part of the star, sew to the inverted angle, wrangle that background triangle around with the needle left down at the inside of that angle, and zoom back down to the tip of the next point. However, I DID notice (clever me), that the camera did not stay on the finished project, so assumed maybe, Eleanor’s usually perfect methods may not have been successful.

So, being skeptical, I decided to do it MY way - the RIGHT way! Pulling the center seam allowances out of the way, I started at the inside angle, carefully backstitching 2 stitches, then sewed to the tip of the point. Then going back to the other inside angle, doing it again, from the other side, and off down to the other point.

Hmmmm, not so great. OK, need more practice – it will press out.

Hmmmm, less great ... OK press those seams in the OTHER direction, that will do the trick.

Hmmmm, a little bunchy, and where did those puckers come from? That foundation paper is causing the puckers. OK, I’ll take off the foundation telephone book pages. .

x%#&^**@#!~/!! 6xxxx drat!!! No improvement - this is not fun anymore, but now I’ve pieced all that precious fabric to the paper and trimmed it! Now what?

Hey - I’ll just try it her way - nothing to lose here. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll redo the xxxx pattern and make a seam in that long thin background strip ( ... getting just a teensy bit impatient with this process ...)

I started at one tip, put in a holding pin at the pivoting point and ... stopped needle down at that inside angle, wrangled that fabric around to the other side (I DID use a tweezers for assistance), totally ignored what was happening with the seams on the underside, zoomed on to the other point, and did some praying, and turned on the iron to improve what was going to be a mess.

Voila - absolutely perfect! Who woulda guessed? My apologies to Ms. Burns!