Vintage Home BOM Quilt Along: Month 3

Welcome to month 3 of Jo Avery's Today's Quilter Vintage Home BOM Quilt Along! You can find the introductory QAL post on Jo's blog here and this month's patterns in issue 31 of Today's Quilter. As well as Jo leading the way, there are regular guest hosts, including me for this month and I've followed Jo's patterns to make five vintage jugs, four smaller 'Milk Jug' rectangular blocks and one large 'Tall Jug' square with an eight-pointed star at the centre.

All the blocks are machine sewn, no foundation paper piecing required. I made one of the smaller milk jug blocks to get a feel for the instructions and then I cut out the other three blocks and chain pieced. I needed to pay extra attention to keeping my pieces in order for the handle as it's easy to muddle the rectangles up, but it's a straightforward block and the jug can face either direction.  I did also get my final top and bottom rectangles the wrong way round in the first block below! A quick unpick and that will all be sorted.  I like the angular shape, it reminds me of vintage Portmeirion pottery, especially the Totem design which has similar lines to this block.

It's a great shape for showcasing a print as a large scrap will suffice; I used white Kona cotton for all the handles. My fabrics are all vintage and I especially enjoyed using the mandala style geometric prints that remind me of pyjamas!  For the Tall Jug block, I used two vintage fabrics: a kitchen motif print and an alphabet/apple print with coordinating Kona.  The background fabric is Kona Copen, a lovely deep sky blue. I used a no-waste method to make the flying geese for the star which is super quick and works best with a multi-directional print. Jo mentions tips for sewing the curved handle here, I used lots of pins and sewed slowly on my machine.

I do love kitchenalia and I have a variety of jugs picked up from car boot sales, charity shops and vintage stores over the years.  Here are a few of my favourites...

This is a little, almost mug shaped jug is Hungarian and from the Granit factory.

Both these jugs are British made and from the J & G Meakin Studio range which date from the 1960s. The red floral jug is from the Dahlia range and the blue flowers are the Topic design by Alan Rogers.  My daughter used to play with the smaller one in 'kitchen' games when she was little and I have dinner plates of the same design.

This is a mid-sized jug and is from the Lotte range by Turi Granstad Oliver produced by Figgjo Flint in Norway.  I have a few Turi designed bits of crockery, I love the illustration style and colour palette. This jug is a little worn at the edges but full of charm.

This beauty is a larger pitcher-style jug, designed by Kaj Franck for the Finnish pottery maker, Arabia.

I plan to mix my various jug blocks with some scrappy pieced blocks using vintage fabrics and make a small summer tablecloth for eating outside in the summer. I think it's the Kona Copen blue that makes me think of outdoor dining! The patterns for the two jug blocks can be found in this month's Today's Quilter magazine and you can see more blocks from the quilt along on the hashtag #TQVintageHomeQAL on Instagram.
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