Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Baby quilts and fabric

As I was doing a bit of cleaning up I came across some fabric that had little duckies on it. 


It was just a piece of fabric - not yardage. I put it in a pile to bring to one of the guilds I belong to. I figured someone might be able to use it. There were other fabrics in the pile that I no longer wanted. One night I grabbed what I had and put it in a bag to bring to the guild meeting. This one piece though, was forgotten. I don't know if it was on purpose or not but as it sat on the desk where I had put the other stuff, I started to think about it. It might just be something that Marg and I could do something with. So, I washed it up again and ironed it and brought it to Marg's. It just so happened that we had finished quilting the wheelchair lap quilts and needed something new to work on.

I cut up all the ducky fabric into 6 inch squares and then Marg and I looked for other fabric to go with it. The duckies feet were a browny-beige so that's what we found. Unfortunately, the one fabric piece we cut up didn't have enough yardage for the whole quilt so we found another piece to go with it. At first we put the six darker squares in the top and bottom rows but then Marg noticed that we could put them diagonally. 


The following week, when we came back to it, Marg had decided that the beige wasn't quite right and she found this yellowy broadcloth. She thought that this fabric enhanced the blue. Since we had the other squares cut, we decided to use them in another quilt.


The beige stayed in the same place but Marg found some backing fabric that she liked and we took the colours from it.


This is the backing fabric. Once we cut enough for the backing, we had a small piece left over. We then wondered if it would give us another quilt.


We needed 24 of the floral squares and 24 coloured squares. Luckily for us, there was enough of the floral to give us yet another top with nothing left over. I do like it when a piece of fabric gets all used up and in this case we used up three pieces in the making of three quilts.


Ta da, we now have three baby quilts to finish. 



Marg came across some fat quarters.


This is the same bundle but the reverse side.


She gave me all the fat quarters because she said she would not be using them. Marg has made several full-sized quilts in her lifetime and quite a few baby quilts too. She is 89 and doesn't make quilts for herself anymore. She just quilts the ones that we both work on. The odd time she will hand quilt a pre-printed panel. She also crochets baby hats and I think she has made a little more than 200 in the past couple of years. 
Quite an inspiration.

4 comments:

  1. An inspiration, indeed, as I struggle with some challenges in my much younger 70s! I applaud both of you for your resourcefulness and talent. You persisted with what you had until you were happy with the layout. I'm drawn to the tropical looking fabric on the top of your second bundle of fat quarters. I always love people prints!

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  2. I hope I'm still quilting at that age. I think the gold goes better with the ducky fabric, and the other quilts are charming as well. The fat quarters look like some cute prints.

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  3. The yellow goes well with the little ducks, and the bright solids benefit from the beige, and the end of the chain reaction is yet another pretty little quilt with the floral and solid fabrics. Well done, both of you. I really respect your friend's activity at that age. - Happy Easter!

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  4. First, I LOVE your tulips in your header pic - second, three quilts, yahooo! And wow, Marg is definitely an inspiration, I want to be her when I grow up!!!!

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