POUT drawer, the last reveal

There was one more project to be uncovered in the POUT drawer:

This was in the process of being hand-stitched together, and I distinctly remember working on it in an airplane.

The big picture:

This is a vintage flimsie I bought, probably from a fellow RCTQer, with the intention of completing it into a quilt. It was stained

but a gentle soak (Orvis? Woolite?) removed the stains and several decades of general grime as well.

Unfortunately, one of the fabrics had "shattered", affecting two blocks along one edge:

There wouldn't be much point in trying to create a quilt from fabrics that wouldn't survive the process, so I removed them.

When the Dallas quilt show was rolling around and several RCTQers were making plans to meet each other there, I decided to go too. It was my first quilt show! I hoped I'd be able to find some replacement fabrics that fit the age of my vintage top--plaid and dotted fabrics seemed to be safe bets.

The RCTQ group found each other thanks to TDB (That Damn Banner, as it was affectionately[?] called by its creator, Sairey).

March 1998

I can't remember the names of most of the people in this shot, but I can remember saying to Ragmop (standing next to me), after the onslaught of flash photography, that "I'll have no trouble finding dotted fabric now!"

Twenty-plus years later, and the fabrics I chose that weekend haven't aged well. They've stood up fine, but just aren't appropriately old, nor faking it well. So I unstitched the new maple leaf block and both fabrics--the yellow and the brown--went into the scrap containers. At some point between then and now, I had tucked into the POUT drawer a piece of red polka-dot fabric. Had I known I'd be dissatisfied with my original choice? Was I dissatisfied before I even finished constructing the block?

Whatever the reason, there it was. I also, in the intervening years, had been gifted with some flour-sack fabric. These come a bit closer to fitting in with the rest of the blocks.

So the plan now is to create a flour-sack maple leaf with a dotted background (if the leaf parts happen to include the stained section of this FQ, so be it). I'll also use the dot fabric to replace the shattered square. When I take the flimsie off the rack and can look closely at it again, I may replace one more questionable square:

What is that brightly-colored piece? Another's repair job? Looking again at the photo near the top of this post, I can spot another square of the orange plaid--I may have to replace that as well, if it's in bad shape. It might be that the two blocks that started to disintegrate did so because of their placement on the edge, and that same fabric didn't get as much abuse (wear? sun exposure?) placed further in.

Once the flimsie is repaired, I plan to back it with unbleached muslin (already bought for this project) and hand-quilt it. It may well be the only thing I ever hand-quilt in my life.