Progress on Sun Bonnet Sue Quilt

Progress report on the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt I am rebuilding for my friend, Lesley.  It is a quilt made by one of her grandmothers for her daughter when she was born.  The only thing that could be saved on the quilt was a few of the little Sun Bonnet Sue's.

I now have it all pinned and am ready to start the hand stitching, following the same patterns as Lesley's grandmother used.

Here is a series of pictures as I progressed through to the point of pinning the backing and batting to the topper. The hardest thing is to do quilting within the confines of a 28 foot 5th wheel RV, where 12 feet of that is a garage.  That doesn't leave me with much space to work, so I have to get creative.

Here I'm laying the Sun Bonnet Sue's on our bed in the RV, and looking at the pictures I'd taken of the quilt before I took it apart, so I could try to put it back together as closely as possible, to the original design.  In the below picture, you may notice that the two Sun Bonnet Sue's down the middle of the quilt were very similar.  That is how the original one was.  But since I had to rebuild some of the Sun Bonnet Sue's due to tears and stains, it through off the color balance a bit, so I rearranged slightly to balance, but still trying to stay true to the original intent. The rebuilt Sun Bonnet Sue's were done using two button down shirts, a blue one and a pink one, that had belonged to Lesley's father.  He died this last summer and when I offered to make Lesley a memory quilt, she asked me to rebuild this particular quilt instead.

The blue and pink Sun Bonnet Sue in the foreground was almost totally rebuilt, using a blue shirt that had belonged to my friend's father.  The pink sleeve, hand, and pink booties were saved from the original. With this particular blue Sun Bonnet Sue, I didn't put on the little left hand, which is a tiny detail of a hand that sticks out on the front side of the dress.  I can't remember if this one was missing a hand or not, but I chose to have it as my "mistake" to omit it.  

 Here is the Sun Bonnet Sue with the pink squares placed in between the Sun Bonnet Sue's.

Here I am sewing.  As you can see, I have a folding table set up alongside me in the center of what passes for our living room/dining room/kitchen.  Tight space.  I am so thankful for a husband who humors me while I take over all the living space in our RV.

This folding table doubles as an ironing board and work space for my sewing.  I store it underneath our bed.  My husband used to store it in one of the outside RV storage bins, but I wanted it close so I could get at it without dragging all his guys stuff out.   

Here is the Sun Bonnet Sue topper all pieced together, ironed with seams facing towards the pinks.

Here is the quilt pinned with the batting and backing.

As you can see, a corner of this quilt touches the floor.  Each day before I start sewing I vacuum the rugs and sweep and wash the floor.  Probably all fabric artists do the same, unless they have all kinds of table work space.  

I haven't progressed further than this yet because I switched to other projects. When living in the RV, I have to choose my project timing around what we are doing. For instance, if we are going to be stationary for a while and not having friends or family in, I can set up and take over the living space to do the cutting and measuring.  I get as many projects ready as possible for the hand stitching phase.  I can do those anywhere, such as while riding in the truck going places, or I can take them to family events and sit stitching as we talk.  So right now in the RV, I'm trying to take advantage of the stationary, non-visitor time to get as much measuring, cutting, and piecing as possible.  

Also, I'm trying to reduce bulk before we head south to Key West for the winter.  I'm "harvesting" old jeans by removing the pockets, cutting the fabric into squares, and cutting out the zippers.  I don't know what I am going to do for sure with all the zippers but stay tuned.  I have ideas bubbling up.  By cutting up the jeans like this, they take up much less space.  I can put the squares into Ziploc baggies and squeeze out the air.  They take up much less space that way, stay nice and  wrinkle-free, and are easy to find.  (I store most of my fabric supplies in the RV shower so initially it was difficult to find specific things without taking everything out.  But I've been evolving a system that is efficient and bagging separate things in Ziploc baggies is one of the things I've found that works for me.