Unloved; Grandmother's garden

Many years ago, I made my first attempt at English paper piecing. I loved it. A bunch of scraps (from this quilt) were cut roughly to shape and tuned into little flowers; a little garden in memory of my grandmother. I had heard that grey thread was a great choice, so that’s what I used, and the templates were printed out and cut apart with scissors. In hindsight not such a great idea, but it gave me a lot of joy at the time. The sides of the hexagons measure approx 1/2".

The flowers were joined with filler hexies from a recycled duvet cover and the whole garden appliquéd onto a piece of white flannel. Why flannel, you may ask, and you can see why here. Anyway, I used one of those awful monofilament threads for the appliqué and have probably not used it since.

I drew some free form lupines, tried out a couple of different sizes, and appliquéd one flower with satin ribbon stem on each side of the garden.

Some free motion quilted flowers and leaves later, and it was done.

Then the story took a wrong turn. Not quite happy with the size, I chopped off a good chunk of the bottom of the quilt. Indeed I did, and with that one cut I made it too small. What I should have done, was to take the thing apart and start over, but I didn't. Instead I added a new quilt-as-you-go style “bottom”, leaving a rather noticeable seam.  The stems were replaced; 

new quilting lines added and the text “In my grandmother’s garden grew lupines” (directly translated from Norwegian; sounds terribly wrong; oh well) was rewritten right on the seam. Might as well enhance the horrid thing, right. You can see the ghost from the previous text right above.

By this time, all I wanted was to finish it, so I secured the edges with bias tape and put it in a frame. After a few years on the wall, it was put away to be forgotten. I was quite happy to see it again, and wanted to use it in a pillow.

The elaborate label which was stitched into the new addendum was unpicked to be saved (inside the pillow case for now), and everything around the garden was chopped off leaving only a ¼” seam allowance. 

It looked better already! I kept one of the lupines though; it’s still hanging in the corner of my design wall.

Adding a simple zipper-closure back, and a new pillow was done. 

Even with the grey thread and the little pieces of flannel showing, I think it looks awesome.

It makes me smile; it’s my grandmother’s flower garden.

Unloved; Yarn flowers

The third Unloved which was transformed into something more useful was this small Yarn flower test cloth from this post back in September 2009. You can read more about my Unloved project here.

While a test cloth is just that, a test, it is better to make it into something than having it lying around doing nothing, right?

I wanted a pouch to stash all those little items that I spend too much time looking for in my handbag (and all my quilting friends have lovely quilted pouches for Everything) so I decided to make the little quilt into a pouch.

First I measured the size simply by folding it into a suitable size, and chopped off the excess.

Then the bottom binding came off. 

It was bound with ribbon yarn and I wanted to keep the top edge, but the side binding also got chopped off.

Auditioning zipper colours.

None of them matched perfectly, but close enough.

Folding the piece in half, marking the fold with a pin.

The zipper stitched in place with a little tail to hold on to.

Different flowers on the two sides.

Simple boxed corners on the bottom.

The zipper tail can also be tucked into the pouch.

The little piece which I chopped off was made into a tiny coin purse. It is the cutest little thing with flowers on one side

and greenery on the other.

I made these last summer and they have been keep my stuff organized ever since.

So much better than that test cloth just wasting space I’d say!

Unloved, Anorexian Fiesta

The second unloved which I finished revamping was this table topper, “Anorexian Fiesta”.

A year into my daughter’s illness, many many years ago, I took a class and was thereafter part of a support group with two other mothers and a husband. At the time this group was very important to me and as it came to an end, I made a quilt for each of the other group members. I brought pieced Ohio star blocks to a meeting and had them and the group leaders sign the blocks.

This is the one I kept of the four quilts that I made. They were all made from the same fabrics, but the other three were a bit smaller. It has been stashed away ever since. For one, I don’t use a lot of table toppers, and the colours were a bit on the dull side.

If you are thinking of doing something similar, I can recommend taking a picture of the quilt and zoom in on different parts. It may give you ideas on how they will look on their own. I often use my iPad to take pictures which makes it easy to zoom in and take screenshots like this.

I cut the quilt into four pieces and trimmed them down to an appropriate size for place mats, making sure that the placement of the half stars was the same on all 4. 

To brighten up the somewhat subdued colours of the thrifted table cloth that I had used for a big portion of the quilt, I added a bright striped binding.

Now we have a set of 4 matching place mats, different but yet the same. You can see how they fit together

and how I cut them down to size.

That was it; the un has been taken out of another unloved. Super easy and rather cool I’d say.

Thanks for stopping by:)

The Unloved series

As I was going through the process of storing my quilts as described in yesterday’s post, there were a few quilts with which I did not quite know what to do. You know the type; the quilt that you made for that challenge and the quilt that turned out a little huh hum and the quilt that you made in class and on and on. Not really bad quilts as such, but never loved and never used.

I sat on my bed looking at the pile of quilts on the floor and realized I could throw them away without any regrets. In fact, we still had the building dumpster in the yard and I would never miss them. Then my mind started wandering as it often does, and I thought of the Unloved quilt which I finished with so much delight. Why couldn’t I do the same with my own quilts?

I blame it partly on my thrifty side, partly on the quilting vacuum in which I was struggling at the time, but before I knew it I was deep in ideas. I would recycle the quilts in different ways and make them into something new. The worst thing that could happen was that I ruined them, but as they had never been used anyway, it would make very little difference.

The first project I worked on was this little quilt. 

I made it in one of the three quilting classes I have ever taken and never cared for it even though I enjoyed the class very much. I’m giving you a fair warning here; such projects are not for the faint hearted. Cutting into a quilt is, well, exciting.

I went to work with a rotary cutter, chopped off a little here and a little there, and started putting the pieces back together, basically making the quilt shorter and wider.

As the project would not get a lot of wear and tear (like a hand bag would), I simply zigzagged the pieces together, raw edge to raw edge. Taping the pieces together with masking tape made the stitching much easier.

Now I have a fab handwork basket sitting next to my spot in the living room. It went from unloved to useful and quite good looking I’d say. 

The appliqué and free motion embroidered centre looks great on the front. 

The Liberty of London borders 

that did my quilt no favour, looks rather dashing in their new positions on the back and bottom. The black lines are the zigzag stitching.

The lining is the recycled pillow case from this post. The creases would not come out, so it’s in there, creases and all.

Working on this project was very liberating. Allowing one self to move on from something which does not work to something that does, sparks lots of creativity. Not long ago I read a post on Facebook by someone who wanted to use her first quilt as a starting point for a bigger quilt, and wanted suggestions on how to do so. I thought it was a brilliant idea and was a bit surprised by all the comments, each and every one saying not to do it.

Do we really need to keep everything that we have ever made in exactly that state? Don’t get me wrong, I am as sentimental as they come. My husband teases me that I have kept every scrap of paper our daughter has ever made a mark on, and it’s not too far from the truth. I get that, but wouldn’t it be lovely to have your first quilt gracing your bed instead of being stored away in a dark place never to be seen? That particular quilt on Facebook only needed some wider quilt as you go borders in neutral colours and it would have been  used and loved every day. See, my mind starts wandering off just thinking of it.

How about you; would you consider reworking one of your unloved??

Unloved

Beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder, and I have the proof right here.

If you saw this, would you like it?

If you saw this, would you purchase it?

If you saw this, would you like to finish it?

What if you saw this fabric

and this

and these?

Well, I did indeed fall in love and did all those things listed above. It was hanging on a rack at the thrift store, three wonky log cabin blocks poorly stitched onto different glossy/stretchy polyester fabrics, hem lines intact and all, and with a strip of fabric added to each end. There was nothing straight about it, but wooosh, I was in love.

My initial plan was to hand quilt it over the summer while staying at the temporary house (after washing it in a mesh bag, of course). Not a good plan really considering all the layers of weird stuff. The only solution was to free motion quilt the whole top to smooth out the extra fabric here and there.

I layered it with batting and backing, and brought it to my guild meeting to do the quilting. My friends and I had so much fun with the idea of me spending so many hours on working with that old thing, but nothing would discourage me from finishing it.

 

(The snake pattern from my free motion quilting class can flatten almost anything)

I am so glad I did. It makes me smile. Big smile. I trimmed the edges and added a dark blue and white binding, but other than that, it is what it is. A table runner begun by someone and finished by someone else decades later. 

It will never be pretty and the pockets along the seams will be there forever, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

(It is indeed flat; the ripples and creases are from being packed in a box)

I think it’s fabulous. How about you?