I had been saving some scraps of a Mother Goose print for years so I could do something with them. The fabric was a cotton polyester blend, so I didn’t want to use it with regular cottons. As bits and pieces of other such blend fabrics were found or came into my possession, I stuck them away with the Mother Goose print. After weeding through three trash bags of gifted fabric scraps and pieces, I discovered that I might have enough blend fabrics to make a quilt. Not a lot of different pieces of fabric, but some were fairly sizeable.
I cut out each Mother Goose picture and bordered each cut square with the same printed flower print so as to make them a uniform size – 8″ x 12″. Then, I cut all the remaining fabrics into 4.5″ squares and laid them out. Sure enough, I had exactly the correct amount of squares. I arranged them into a pattern reminiscent of The Anarchist, although a bit less random, and sewed them together.
A much larger piece of blended fabric from the same trash bags was large enough for the back. I sewed the back to the front from the reverse with a layer of batting added, turned right side out and topstitched/quilted each seam and the edge. No binding on this one.
Other blended fabrics in those trash bags that were not suitable for this quilt were used to make baby bibs and burp cloths, as well as a few baby blankets – both pieced and un-pieced.
While I don’t often use blended fabrics, I do use them for this sort of baby item. The fabrics do not wear as well as all cotton fabrics, but they are more stain resistant and dry much faster. This makes them quite suitable for things that you know are going to be spit up on, have food smeared into, etc.
Altogether, I have 4 blankets, 2 quilts, 4 burp cloths and 18 bibs finished now in preparation for the County Artisan Fair coming up on April 27th in Canton, NY. That is in addition to the usual cotton quilts and wallhangings I have finished. Now, I have 15 pillows that I need to finish for that Fair, as well as finish making some display racks.
Oh, and I got this lovely girl working:
She was quite a find at one of my favorite local used-stuff stores – cost $20.00. A Kenmore machine ca. 1967 that does both straight and plain zigzig stitching. The bobbin wouldn’t stay in and the original travel case is damaged. This machine is extremely heavy. It is older than my usual machine by about 15 years, and simpler. After fiddling with the bobbin case and other bobbin apparatus on and off for a day or two, everything suddenly clicked into place and she now sews beautifully! (Did you actually expect a technical explanation from me regarding how I fixed it, including proper part names? All I can tell you is my technique – I consider, fiddle with, tweak and tinker when “fixing” anything – whether it’s a quilt, a meal, a machine, or a pattern).
Now, back to those pillows!