64 Square feet o' Baltimore....


Golly I have been soooo busy! I could blog on something different every day of the week, except I don't have time! The gorgeous fall days are here and as usual, I have a million things going on, and have to nearly make myself go outside to enjoy the crispy air....my favorite time of the year. I have been meaning to post about my Baltimore ever since getting the top finished on the 23rd of October! I still can't believe I have finally finished it.....looking back, I can honestly say it was a horrible way to assemble the top~ horrendous even! I must be insane to have done it this way. Looks good, yes, but do I recommend this type construction to anyone else? Definitely not.

The sashings are what made this top so inconceivably hard to make up~ each point of my weensie little dogteeth is applique, not pieced. So first, I connected them into rows, and then, as you can see above, pinned and appliqued the rows together. Its a good thing my dining room table is a 12 footer, I could have never done this on the floor. The rows took nearly an hour to pin each one, with each point getting its own little pin

The technique I have used for the entire top is simple needle turn applique, with between 15-22 stitches per inch. The hardest thing was dealing with the bulk of it all~ I had to carefully plan what rows to do first, so that I would carry the least amount of bulk in my hand. I carefully folded and rolled the top and bottom, and towards the end, it was really h*a*r*d and slow and I could no longer get my hand around it, so I had to resort to holding my fabric from underneath, like a big mitten..........it wasn't pretty

BUT! I am stubborn and hard headed as my husband says, and I prevailed! Now my next step is to decide weather to quilt it, or not to quilt. I do really like and prefer the look of the coverlet type that so many Baltimore Albums were made up as. I am planning to do up a sample quilting with backing and fill, to see how the quilting will look...I got the frame you sent Ma~ so will be starting that el moi pronto!

My top is set on point, and I had not appliqued the edge half blocks before I assembled it.....I wasn't sure I wanted anything in that space, but once everything was together and I could stand back and look, yes....they didn't look right empty! So back to applique I went, and each half block got a special design, all from original Baltimore Album Quilt blocks as in keeping with the others, and I also made sure each one had at least one butterfly...some of them got two! Each butterfly was also taken from original blocks. This block is the squirrel from the Sliver quilt, with 2 butterflies from the Ruffner Baltimore, before making up. I like to cut my pieces and set them together in my design so I can see how it will look~ then I can make any changes before stitching if I don't like it.

Same cutie patutie squirrel all made up.

This white rose is also from the Sliver quilt

I have kept meticulous records of every minute I have spent stitching, haw many pieces each block has ect ect ect.....one of these days I will tally everything up and give you the funky details~ I love things like that. Every stitch done by hand, finished my top is 8 foot square ...could have been a bit bigger~ its not big at all compared to some Baltimores....I will let you know how the quilting question turns out!