A couple of weeks ago I found this awesome old window frame in a corner at The Hunt, a fantabulous vintage shop on Bank Street in New Milford, CT. If you haven’t been, stop reading, and go. The window measures just shy of 20″ square with four panes. I’ve been doing upcycling or sewing-adjacent projects lately, and thought it would be fun to create a wall hanging from this.
We carry a bunch of different That’s Sew Emma Foundation Paper Pads, but the Vintage Sunburst ones had just come in. Perfect for a window, am I right? I used the 8″ size which is just a little bit too big for the window areas. We also have them in a 12″ size which would be stunning in a full quilt.
Next I dug into my Moda Grunge bin, hoping I had enough colors to do four sunbursts to form a rainbow without repeating colors. I needed 48 colors… at last count I had about 70. I used a Moda Grunge white for the centers and a new RJR group, Dapple Dots, for the background.
I laid out the colors and cut my pieces, cutting extra colors so I had flexibility when putting the blocks together. The paper piecing went quickly given I only had to make four blocks, and was made all the quicker with my pressing tools at my sewing table. My best advice…. use a strip stick to get nice open seams, and use lots of wonder clips to get your blocks to go together well without skewing or putting pin holes in them.
Then, it was on to the basting and quilting on my HandiQuilter Amara with Pro-Stitcher. .
I quilted the blocks using ByAnnie Soft and Stable as I wanted them to fill the windows and be firm. And thank the heavens for Superior Threads. I used King Tut 40 wt variegated thread and it is amazing that they had all the colors I needed to pull the blocks together. We have a ton of Superior Threads thread in the store and they never let me down regardless of the color I am looking for!
The last step was sanding the wood to clean it up, and washing the windows. Thanks Rob for handling that part of the project! Then, I trimmed my blocks, and arranged them in the windows, setting them so where the color ended naturally led to the continuation of the rainbow in the next window. I used electrical tape to hold them in place. This will allow me to sit with the project for a few days and then move them around if I so desire. I can see a few nudges I may want to make, and I will probably change the orientation. I might even shrink the papers and redo them as the blocks are a little too big for the windows, but for tonight this is a wrap and we’ll see how I feel after I look at it for a few days.
If you’d like to make a project like this, definitely check out The Hung or Elephant’s Trunk flea market. There are all sorts of abandoned windows out there that would be a wonderful project for your quilty creation. I have another one in the works, a larger piece, with a window I found at Elephant Trunk in April. That project will be a landscape, some day, some way.
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