Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Immortal Lives of Fabric Scraps: a Story

Once upon a time, there was a quilter named Carol. Carol decided to start collecting cotton floral fabrics. She bought them now and then, in various quilt shops. After a year or more, when she realized she had a large collection of florals, Carol decided it was time to start sewing.

Carol had in mind a pretty, floral quilt made of simple half-square triangles (HSTs). She cut and sewed, and cut and sewed. Soon she had a large pile of pretty floral HSTs. Playing with various arrangements of the blocks was quite fun, but surprisingly, Carol did not feel pleased with many of her first attempts at block settings. They just weren't as pretty as she had envisioned.

Undaunted, Carol kept playing until she found a satisfying arrangement of blocks. The quilt top, no longer aiming for bed size, appeared to prefer the lap-size arrangement that you see here:

48" x 64" (to be honest, Carol got bored and didn't sew these together yet, but this is what they will become very soon)

Alas, using this arrangement meant that Carol had several leftover floral HSTs on hand. One possibility was to toss them into the "blocks bin" where blocks tend to wait and wait and wait for further attention. "No, no!" cried the pretty HSTs. "Please put us to use right away! We don't want to languish with all those other (um... dare we say ugly) un-used blocks! We want to be put into a quilt top right away and be given to a child or adult who will love us!"

Carol relented and played with the leftover HSTs until they formed themselves into this flying geese arrangement:

32" x 40" plus not-yet-made border

Carol liked this plan OK, but still had some leftovers. While she was in the "use-em-up" mood, she decided to keep going. Here is what she created with the Leftovers from the Leftovers:

32" x 44" - a good baby size

Carol realized that the flying geese quilt top would appreciate having some kind of interesting border, so she got to work making border pieces from extra fabric and unused scraps from the original florals collection. Alas, once again she hit a brick wall. These 4-patches just did not complement the flying geese at all. When put together, all these pretty florals just turned into ugly ducklings.

Carol was rather tired of pinks and florals but thought, "OK. I'm on a roll. Can't stop now." So those leftover 4-patches turned into this:
32" x 40" plus not-yet-made border

From her innocent collection of floral fabrics, Carol has now created four quilt tops. AND, those darn flowers are multiplying faster than you can say "pretty cotton florals." Carol finds herself with still more floral scraps. Will these turn into a fifth or even a sixth quilt??


Carol began to dream fondly of those Boy-Colors and Sports-Themed fabrics she has. They will make some wonderful non-pinky quilts that will contain NO FLOWERS. Meanwhile, you must wait for further installments to see what Carol does with the Last of the Leftovers of the Leftovers. Do you think she will ever really see the end of the florals??? After all, isn't the moral of the story: Scraps Keep Multiplying and Live Forever????

1 comment:

joe tulips said...

Now this is looking like fun. Makes me wish we were closer. I would love to come help arrange and rearrange and play with what you have. Love what you have done so far! The pinwheels are so cute.