Tag: craft

Plaid Star Quilt

it is soft and cuddly from washing and use, a little tatty and ragged in places

This quilt is a group effort in that it was a “block of the month” challenge of my local quilt group. Each month a block pattern is given to group members with palette and fabric type instructions. At the following month’s meeting members contribute one or more blocks each with their name pinned to it. The names are put in a hat and a name drawn out, the winner gets the blocks. It is a good way of keeping your hand in and trying a block pattern without being obliged to make an entire quilt. If you don’t fancy winning the blocks, don’t put in a block, or don’t put your name on it. If you do want to win contribute more blocks to increase your odds.

still looking good


I won this set of blocks 13 years ago, and made it up for my nephew; he was 6 then and as you can see very pleased with his quilt.

It’s a well loved quilt, by which I mean it is soft and cuddly from washing and use, a little tatty and ragged in places, and I have done a couple of repairs while I had it back from him to photograph . Nevertheless it’s still looking good. It’s a good choice for a quilt for a man, and could incorporate old shirts to personalise it.

I loved that skirt

I incorporated left over fabric from a favourite seersucker madras skirt I made for myself which I wore till it became too faded and tatty.

Had Dad finished with that shirt mum?

Another fabric my mother used may be an old shirt of my dad’s. I suspect most fabrics were new scraps leftover from other projects. The only fabric I bought was the backing and the border. The border fabric looks good but the weave was rather loose, and may not wear as well as I would like but is wonderfully soft, and the colour works well with the disparate fabrics of the donated blocks.
The quilt is now in honourable retirement, my nephew is 18, his current taste requires bright primary colour blocks and lots of black, but that’s another quilt and deserves its own post.

Yellow

I have long nursed a plan to make an Autumn leaves quilt using every colour of Autumn:- sulphur yellow , cherry red, crimson, flame, burgundy, bright-bright Orange (another colour I won’t give houseroom to) and various shades of brown from chestnut to mouse.

I don’t do yellow, not in clothes or shoes, home ware, cars, I cannot get on with it at all and would not welcome it in any form, you won’t even find much of it in my garden….. and yet I love Autumn, when the leaves begin to turn I just want to be out in the fresh air, kicking up fallen leaves and enjoying God’s Creation.

I have a good collection of hidden yellow fabrics in my stash, because I have long nursed a plan to make an Autumn leaves quilt using every colour of Autumn:- sulphur yellow , cherry red, crimson, flame, burgundy, bright-bright Orange (another colour to which I won’t give houseroom ) and various shades of brown from chestnut to mouse. All made with a hazy blue background as if seen from beneath the tree on a cloudless blue sky. I think I need Maple leaf blocks of varying sizes to replicate Acers in Fall, they come in so many shapes and colours that I think it will work. In the mean time it feels as if I have a guilty secret, that part of my stash which never see’s the light of day, and if I do come across it by accident while looking for “Just the right fabric” , those pieces are slung aside with disdain like an unloved child.

I don’t do yellow.


But thank goodness Mother Nature does.

There’s nothing new about Recycling

The wonderful thing for me, more than 40 years after I first wore my lovely dress it is still part of the fabric of my life.

There’s nothing new about recycling, patchwork was invented for it. I love recycling fabrics and preserving them for posterity,and holding memories in a tangible form.
Being a child of the 60’s I have never known real hardship, though I have been so short of money I’ve had holes in my shoes, and wet feet. Nevertheless being the child of parents raised in the last war, who in turn had parents who were born in the first decade of the last century, experiencing both Wars and Depression, I have learnt economy, ingenuity and the principles of recycling from generations of Master cheese parers.
I find it hard to throw anything away if it might still serve some useful purpose. Evidence of this can be seen in the photos attached, a photograph of me, aged about 8, pudding bowl haircut and a typical 1960’s dress.

Me Circa 1968
Never mind the unflattering haircut, look at the dress fabric

When it no longer fit me, the dress and it’s twin,( my sister had one too) went back in Mum’s fabric stash. I always loved the fabric but couldn’t find a project for it. Years later I began collecting fabrics for a scrap quilt, and there in the centre is my dress fabric, and again in several places in the quilt.

there's plenty more

The fabric also appears in other scrap quilts of mine, in fact every last tiny piece of that fabric was recycled, and the wonderful thing for me, more than 40 years after I first wore my lovely dress it is still part of the fabric of my life.