Topic: Quilting
I thought I was getting a great deal when I stipped at the Mill End Store and found a roll-up of 2 1/2 inch fabric strips at only $13. SCORE! I loved the pink roses I could see around the outside and the colors of chocolate and various pinks. There was just a hint of blue and white on the folded edges of other fabrics peeking out.
The big awakening was when I got it home and unrolled it to discover there were only 4, yes - FOUR, fabrics in the roll. Lots of each one but only FOUR fabrics. Sadder than that was that one of them was a hideous stripe, one was a weird paisley, and only TWO of them were fabrics I liked - the pink and chocolate roses I had seen on the outside of the roll and a smaller print with blue squares make of tiny blue flowers and scattered with small roses.
Well, you can't make a quilt with only two strips (you could but you would be bored to tears). So I went digging in my stash for some go-alongs. I came up with some squares harvested from a wide stripe (from which I had previously used the narrow strips), some two-toned bricht pink with just the right amount of watermelon in it, and a chocolate brown with asian flowers and 'strands' of undulating dashed lines.
The stripe was fussy-cut into 5 1/2 inch blocks. Then I used the courthouse steps pattern to surround it with the pink, then the blue diamond, then the roses, and finished with the asian print.
Here is the basic block:
The two with roses are the only ones from the fabric roll.
I set these together in alternating directions in a 4 x 5 layout to finish up with this quilt:
I could not imagine what I would ever use the ugly striped strips for so I decided to try them out as binding. I rolled mostly to the back to leave as little showing as possible on the front. Turns out to be about 3/8 inch.
That 2 1/2 inch strip (folded in half of course) left a LOT of wrap for the back binding. But against the relatively sedate backing the stripe is not so bad.
I used up the paisley from this roll on the denim quilt recently so I have exausted the supply of this strange fabric collection.
(In my mind, I wonder if this fabric was all cut into strips - poorly cut, I might add - because they knew it would NEVER sell as yardage.)
This quilt ended up larger than my normal lap quilts at 52 x 65.
Ddd
