A recycled lifestyle…

One of my auction “job lot of fabric” buys recently included a part-made cot quilt top; straightforward squares in shades of blue & white with ditsy prints, it was nice enough that I kept it, thinking I’d do something with it soon. So when I heard that a young friend was expecting a baby boy, it sprang to mind, although I’ve never believed that it has to be blue for a boy or pink for a girl. I hauled it out, and yes, it was just the right size.

On closer inspection, it was a bit – curious. The squares had been beautifully hand-stitched together, very neatly. But the maker had evidently heard that quilts need binding, so they had carefully hand-stitched two rows of commercial bias binding, one blue and one red, round the edge. But they hadn’t been able to decide what to do with the corners, which were all different. One had been overlapped, the next one mitred, and the other two hadn’t been finished at all, with random bits of binding left flapping, one of them much too short. I think at that point, they’d got frustrated, put it aside, and never returned to it. We’ve all had projects like that… but what a waste of all that careful stitching!

What to do? I sandwiched a piece of cotton batting between the top & a chunk of soft old candy-striped flanelette sheet, and hand-stitched the red edge down over the edge, then machine-stitched the “border” to give it some stability. One corner was almost bare, though. So I found some reds in my fabric cupboard; I tried folding rectangles over to make squares to cover the corners, but nothing looked quite right until I though of appliqé-ing little hearts over them, which somehow brought the whole thing “alive”.

So that’s another bit of stash busted; not all my own work, but I hope I’ve done the original maker justice, and that my young friend’s baby will snuggle happily into it or play on it for some years to come. Now I think I might do some experimenting; there’s still – rather a lot – of stash, not to mention lockdown, left to go…