Now and then I get a desire to work with fabric. My grandmother used to quilt (one of her artistic endeavors) and I have one of those quilts that have pieces of fabric from grandpa's shirts and grandma's dresses. My grandmother had to care for her family during the depression and saved every usable scrap of material. She would even cut buttons off of shirts and unwind the threads holding those buttons, then carefully wrap the thread around a small piece of cardboard. Today, in our disposable society we are so spoiled. It never occurs to most of us to use items we already have to make a quilt. Like most people, I go to the fabric store and buy the fabrics I need. This quilt I decided to do a little differently. I had a child's dress in pink, orange and gold and used that color pallet to create my quilt. I cut out as many circles as I could, using different sized bowls and bottle caps as my pattern. I then went to a second hand store to find a nice big piece of fabric or sheet to use as the backing. I found a pink striped fabric that worked perfectly and saved me money. I used a plain muslin for the front backing and did buy some small pieces of coordinating fabrics for the additional circles. After I cut out the circles I used an iron on fused backing to adhere the circles to the muslin then did a tight zig zag around each circle. Once the quilt top was finished I used a batting in the middle and used a random stitch pattern to put it all together. Running my wavy lines down the quilt vertically so that I could fit up to 1/2 the bulk into the space beside the needle and the machine. Overall, it is a fun quilt and a bit out of the box from the traditional quilt patterns.
