Happy Birthday, Elvis

Recycling

Yesterday I mentioned that a couple of the first quilts I made started out with squares from a fabric/Styrofoam wreath. Here they are. The wreath was made by a former daughter-in-law and had hung on my living room wall for maybe 10 years. Not too long after their divorce my son was visiting. I had just started quilting and had made mostly wall hangings. I half jokingly said to him that I'd noticed there was a bunch of fabric in that wreath that would probably look good in a quilt. He said "go for it".

I immediately took the wreath down and starting pulling out the fabric squares, tossed them in a bag in the washer and by the next morning had a whole table full of roughly 3" squares, mostly blues, reds and browns with lots of heart patterns.

I'd already accumulated a bit of a stash and decided I wanted even more variety than the 8 or 10 fabrics that were in the wreath. I also knew I wanted to add some plaids. By the time another day had passed I had cut all of the wreath fabric to uniform size and added another dozen or so prints. I ended up piecing two tops from the resulting squares.

The first quilt was a pattern called "Hidden Hearts" (because four of the four-patches have 3 dark fabrics and only 1 light..which forms a heart sort of--can you spot them?). I think I got the pattern from a Fons and Porter Magazine.
I quilted the panels separately (this was the biggest project I'd attempted at that point and was still building my quilting skills on a little old Brother machine) and then joined them with contrasting fabric strips front and back. I still really like the back of this quilt. And it really does lie flat..I just did a poor job of laying it out for this picture.

With the remaining squares I made 9 patches and snowball blocks with homespun cream plaids. The flip and sew corners on the snowball blocks left me with a lot of triangles so I used them for the border. Isn't it fun how different the same fabrics can look?

One of my favorite things about this quilt is the fun chicken fabric I used for backing.

And that is how you recycle fabric wreaths!

Got another Dutch Treat done last night. This one is called Shooting Stars and makes 95 to date.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

This pretty flicker spent some quality time outside my sewing room window today trying to cheer me out of my funk about The Buttonhole closing.






So I'm supposed to be concentrating on finishing things, right? I did get another Dutch Treat block done last night while watching TV. It's called Water Lily.


But today I took two steps back and added two more UFO's to the list.




First of all while looking for something else I unearthed a box with some red and white Christmas squares. Do you remember those fabric wreaths that were so popular in the late 80's or early 90's....Styrofoam wreaths with fabric squares poked into them? Like this?

Two of my earliest bed quilts started by removing the squares from a wreath hanging on my living room wall..I'll show you those quilts another time.

At a garage sale quite some time ago I bought a red and white wreath thinking I could do the same thing. At some point I pulled the squares out and since they were cut with pinked edges I was able to toss them into a net bag and launder them without terribly ravely edges. Then I put them in a box and forgot about them.

Well when I found the box today I was in a mood to be easily distracted so I decided to do something with them. Since the person that made the wreath wasn't cutting pieces for a quilt, the squares weren't all that uniform in size. I was dreading the idea of having to trim 120 + squares individually. I'm a "get to the fun part fast" sort of girl.

So I decided I could at least cut the trimming part in half or maybe fourths. I stacked a white square and a red square and trimmed only two adjacent sides like this:



I did this to all of the squares in pairs and then sewed them into four patches, keeping the untrimmed edges to the outside. Make sense?

Then I just trimmed the entire blocks. It not only took care of the other half of the trimming but ensured that I ended up with perfectly sized blocks.

In really short order I had 33 four patches. I could have still been squaring up the individual squares!

Now I need to decide what I'm going to do with them.

Then I finished piecing an assortment of squares sent to me by my daughter-in-law. They were already cut, though again not very uniformly..actually not even close. And I spent a LOT of time last weekend trimming them to the same size. She bought these at an estate or garage sale so we don't know who saved this collection of fabrics. Obviously someone who likes lots of BRIGHT, LOUD, fabric. It's definitely not even close to something I'd put together, as much as I love variety and scrap quilts. But there was also something kind of quirky cute about this mismatch of fabrics so I decided to go with it.

Even LOUDER when you get up close! I think it's kind of 60's Flower Power meets 70's Funk.

Now I have to decide if I add a funky border or just quilt it up as is for a fun sofa throw? I kind of think either a stripe or large polka dot??

I'm Having Palpitations!

Yesterday was a day of such good news ..finding an exciting new BOM just made my day!

Today I am in absolute shock, having just learned that my favorite quilt shop will be closing. The Buttonhole in McPherson, KS is about three and a half hours away, but such an amazing place and my favorite place to shop. They have over 12,000 bolts of fabric!! And about a gazillion patterns, notions, machines, etc. And a store full of samples that tempt you at every turn. Just look at some of the pictures on the gallery page (click on the large Buttonhole section).

My husband, who travels throughout the state of Kansas as a behavioral consultant, first discovered the shop and came home bearing a sack full of fat quarters for me. At that time fat quarters were $1.00 each or 25 for $20. In the last year or so they have gone up to $1.25 each or 25 for $25. And I'm talking quality fabric..the same stuff that is on the bolts on the shelves. I've always assumed they take the fabrics that haven't sold as well and cut them up into fat quarters. There is a separate room with shelving for these fat quarters and bolts of other sale fabrics. Guess where I always head as soon as I walk in the door?

Tom has always been able to get there far more often than I have. And he always returned bearing bags of fat quarters. I finally got such a stash of them that I had to tell him to slow down. Can you imagine?

The shop has been such a destination that two years in a row several friends I met online have gathered with me at McPherson for two and three days of sewing and shopping at the Buttonhole. We rented a meeting room at a local motel, set up our machines and had a great time. And we chose McPherson purely because of The Buttonhole!

Several miles to the south in a town called Yoder is another shop called Nuts & Bolts. They have carried fabric from The Buttonhole, selling only bolt ends at discounted prices. I suppose this means the end of that shop too!

I'm told the closing sale starts next Monday, January 12. I'm sure it will be a total zoo! If I lived closer I'd be there with bells on.

If I were more of a drinking person I'd have to get drunk by noon!

I'm Such A Pushover!

I do love BOM's!

And I do love applique!

And I love basket blocks!

Combine those things and make it free and how in the world is a gal supposed to look the other way! I surely have enough UFO's to finish and a To-Do list that's longer than my life expectancy. But..............

Bunny Hill Designs is offering a new free block of the month that is just too cute to ignore. The new button on my sidebar will take you to the BOM. Be sure to check out their other patterns too. Definitely some charmers!

Only 6 days into the New Year and I caved. Sure keeps life interesting though!