Old is New

The first project for April is making a pair of throw pillows for my home office sofa out of these two Dresden Plate patchwork blocks from my gifted UFOs bin. To preserve the fragile hand stitching and old feedsack fabrics, I handwashed them before I pressed them. Most of the little stains on them didn't come out, and they don't lay completely flat, but they're clean.

To make them more matched I removed the six striped diamond pieces from one of them, which I'll use for another project. For the backing fabric I'm using a big piece of synthetic white fabric with a slight crepey texture that came in one of my Fabscrap white scrap packs.

With a little strategic tucking I can flatten the blocks as I applique them to the white fabic.

Here's how they turned out. I made them bed-size so I can use them on the bed in the guest room once spring turns to summer.