What I got done and the start of the wool quilt

Saturday I finished up a few more alterations. This skirt had been altered by using safety pins.

I think I can do better. The skirt had a side zipper so I had to take it out so I could spread the 4 1/2" that I needed to take this skirt in on both sides. Yes, it was a pain, but it's done!

I had to take this dress in at the zipper, so it was another removal and reinstall.

The last thing I did before I quit sewing was hem this little dress. I had to stop sewing and run the vacuum quick and clean up the place a bit before the person coming to pick up the clothes came.

Finally I could start on the wool quilt. I got a bunch of men's suit fabric sample books from a taylor's shop probably 15 years ago. I had thought about making a wool quilt, but I never got around to doing it.

My wool storage bin with these sample pieces was a mess! I spent 4 - 6 hours on Saturday pulling off the paper tags, throwing out the poly/wool blend pieces, and pressing the pieces so I could stack them by color. I also had saved the pieces from a couple of suits I had hemmed at one time so those will go into the quilt too.

On Sunday, I then picked out pieces that I wanted to use in this quilt, bundled them together with a safety pin and headed to the washer.

All this sorting was messy. There was fuzz and little pieces of wool everywhere! I decided when I washed them I didn't want all the crumbs going down the drain so I pinned an old sock on the washer drain. The sock is now gray from all the lint it caught.

This is what the pile looked like after I took it out of the dryer.

It took a couple of hours to untangle, press, and cut these pieces. By the way this was not all the wool scraps. I only washed about 1/3 of what I have. From each piece I cut a 2 7/8" strip and a 2" strip.

When I was going thru the wool scraps I came across a few blocks I had already pieced. There was one lovely log cabin block made with 2" strips

and three rail fence blocks that were 7 1/2". 7 1/2" is the longest lenght I can get out of the wool pieces so that dictated the size I was going to work with. I decided the rail fence blocks would be the way I would go on this first wool quilt so here is what I have done so far. I don't know what size of quilt my brother needs yet for his bunk, but it will be easy to add another row on the width or lenght if needed. I just want to get a top mostly done so when I get the measurments I will have the majority of the top already done. The blocks are sew together, but I haven't sew the rows together yet.

I may add in a bit more color with these scraps. These colors sure would make a interesting man's suit!

So this week will be all about working on this piece.