At Long Last
Overall Sam is coming into his own.
After decades of being separated in my stashes of sewing projects, Overall Sam will finally meet up with Sun Bonnet Sue. These two iconic characters were popular in the 1950s. My mom, Lena, made several baby quilts with these two images applied to white feed sack blocks using feed sack prints to complete each image.
Here we are in 2014 and the popular feed sack prints are being reproduced for just such a project as Overall Sam. Darlene Zimmerman from Fairfax, Minnesota, has a great line of such prints like the one that will finish off Overall Sam’s quilt blocks.
Just as Sun Bonnet Sue, Overall Sam is being done with Tri-Chem fabric paints. Over the last several weeks I have been replacing tips in paint tubes to allow me to finish up this dynamic duo. The ball point tips are fragile and Aunt Florence’s set of paints were just waiting for such a project as 
this. Sun Bonnet Sue was painted in the 1960s and amazingly I got quite a few paints operational for allow for each of the twelve blocks of Overall Sam to be a bit different from the next, much like Sun Bonnet Sue. Needless to say, I am being very careful to clean each and every tip when I am finished with it as they may be called into service for other projects now that I have dipped my toe into an additional option.
Quilted Sun Bonnet Sue
After all the painting is finished I will be taking the Overall Sam quilt top to the Old Alley Quilt shop in Sherburn, Minnesota, to have Sharon put the quilt on the long arm sewing machine for quilting. In times past there would be a gathering of gals sitting around a quilt frame to do the sewing, but that portion of quilting is just about a lost art. I can still manage a wall hanging for hand quilting, but the arthritis in the fingers says a definite “No” to the amount of stitching a full sized quilt mandates. I know from past quilts that Sharon has done for me, Overall Sam will come into his own with pride.
What really makes this special to me is that there will not be a time when someone would come across these printed blocks and discard them. I know from experience that a finished quilt will find a great home compared to 12 blocks that need to have something done to them, but no one knows where to begin or what medium to use to finish the project.
Oh yes, this project is quite the investment of hours and I do own the fact that my hands are not nearly as steady with the painting as they were fifty years ago. I forgive myself for that, for the revisiting of memories of times past as I work at this is priceless.