Gingham!

It all started when. . .

I went to a gigantor garage sale and found boxes of fabric, and tons of gingham.  Gingham?  I hadn’t used or sewn with gingham for years.  I sent some to Krista, of KristaStitched and she suggested we do something fun this summer with our gingham.  One thing led to another and last week a box showed up at my house with some more gingham, woven this year:

Gingham is an interesting fabric because it’s not printed, it’s woven.

Here’s some printed fabrics–we call them checks because there’s only two colors.  In gingham, there’s three.

Check on the bottom, gingham (blue and chocolate brown) on the top.

I call them yarn-dyed, because the color is not applied, like it is in printed cottons, but the yarns are dyed the color present in the gingham, in this case some aqua and some chocolate brown yarns were woven to give us that “checked” appearance so typical of this fabric. The blue yarns overlapping the blues give the solid blue color and ditto for the browns.  But when the blues and the browns intersect, you get that half-toned looking square with both colors in it.  This also means that there is no right or wrong side to ginghams, which when I started to make my paper pieced block (in the Gingham Giveaway logo) I didn’t have to worry about that at all.  And that was one complicated little paper-pieced block.  You can find it here.

The new cottons are 100% cotton, made for traditional and modern sewers.  Okay, so when that box arrived, I thought . . . what was I thinking?  Way too much to use all myself, so Krista and I thought we’d have a Gingham Giveaway.

But it’s not just any giveaway–we want you to play along, and make something gingham-y for yourself and for all of us to see.

So I put together some packets of 3 fat quarters of gingham and a full half-yard of Kona White cotton.  If you are selected in the giveaway, you agree to make a quilt–or a quilt block–or four quilt blocks–or a mini-quilt–or something along those lines with your ginghams.  We’d ask that you then post it up on your blog linking back to both Krista and my blogs.  That’s all!

Dates: The Gingham Giveaway will be held early in June.  We’ll let you know when to leave a comment on our blogs, but we’d like you to be thinking about it.  We’ll announce those who want to play along with us, and because gingham is so picnic-Americana-looking, we ask that you blog about your block(s) or your quilt top on Wednesday July 4th.

Because this is a summer fun project, we don’t need your quilt to be quilted, or your blocks to be finished.  We just want you to have some fun with some ginghams and play, play, play!

Check back. . . or should I say. . . gingham back!