Another Recycled Quilt from Shirts And Curtain Fabric

 This quilt was the inspiration for another one I wrote about recently as it was my first foray into using old shirt material to make the squares and triangles that make up the design for this quilt.  The old shirts were from my son and husband and had accumulated in my fabric stash and were just crying out to be used for something.  I also used some old curtain fabric -- the satiny brown fabric -- for the side striping that finishes off the design.  And I used a piece of old flannel sheeting for the backing. You can tell that I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to bits of fabric!

Again, I used the fast triangle sewing technique to make up the squares pretty quickly.  If you are working really fast, and a bit slapdash like me, you can skip using the ruler and pencil and just eyeball sew it.  When I cut the squares out, I use a 5" by 5" square piece of cardboard as a guide for the size of each square.  After making as many squares as you can generate from your fabrics, it's time to lay it out and see how you can arrange them in different ways.  This particular design (the blue and orange plaid squares) is called a windmill design and it's easy to do if you just lay them out ahead of time and turn the squares in the right way.  I take my time with designing these, and in this case it was a full week before I had it figured out!

 Once I put the larger squares together it was time to join them together with strips of grey plaid shirting and then finish it off with the bronze edging.  I also stitch-in-the-ditch in a few areas, to join the top piece to the bottom, once I've joined the flannel back to the designed portion. But I don't quilt all of the top to the bottom portion as I like my "quilts" looser.
Lest you think I sew this up in a day or so let me tell you that this type of project can take me several months to complete. I may just cut up the shirting fabric scraps one day. Another day cut them in the 5 inch squares.  Another day stitch the triangles, and yet another day to lay it all out. And yet another day or week to put the surrounding strips on.  The backing on this quilt project was some leftover flannel sheeting I had and that gave it a nice soft feel. I didn't use batting to fill it but I could have used some old blanketing or another layer of flannel sheeting had I wanted this to be fatter and warmer.  I just left it this way, essentially two layers of fabric.  It's just great to tuck around me when I'm reading in bed -- as it's about 4 foot by 4.5 feet wide, and I didn't want something too big.  This size makes for a great lap quilt for keeping you warm watching TV on the couch too and is a size that folds up neatly and can be easily stored nearby where you might use it. Everything was scrap fabric so again I felt virtuous upcycling, recycling and reusing all these bits of fabric that were piling up in my fabric stash.

Blue Jean Leftover Fabric Becomes Boys' Room Banners

It was fun using up the leftover blue jean fabric scraps to make banners for two boys' bedrooms. For each letter, I created a simple triangle-shaped pattern and stitched down the sides and created a casing at the top.  I then cut out the letters in a contrasting fabric, tracing them first on the fabric, and overstitched them with zigzagging onto the triangle-shaped pieces.  The "cord" holding the banner pieces together is made from the thick leg seams and threaded through the casing with a large safety pin.  I then just thumb tacked these to the walls!  Depending on the number of letters in the name, you can run these up in less than two hours.

Wreath Made of old Rags and Fabric Scraps

This wreath is made completely out of scrap materials, including the frame made of twisted wires braided together. I tied on loads of ribbons made from little pieces of fabric left over from other sewing projects. For instance, since I've lost about 25 pounds in weight over the past 18 months and gone from a size 10 to a size 4 (!), I've had to take in the side seams on many dresses, tops and blouses over these past two seasons. In some cases, there are hems I've had to cut off also as skirts have gotten shorter lately or I've had to hack and trim to make things proportional. Other fabric pieces are just left-overs from some other sewing projects as I bust through my fabric stash making pillows, blankets, cloths, bags, table napkins, and children's clothes.  I don't even hem or finish the scraps for this wreath, I just make sure they are long enough to at least knot once around the wire frame. Now it's finished this wreath is hanging up in the kitchen but I'm thinking of putting it on the front door later in December as the colors seem kind of wintry.  I suppose I could add some Christmassy things to it -- maybe some shiny silver baubles I recently made by spray painting used light bulbs, or a big red ribbon -- but I'll think about that. But it's nice to make use of some fabric bits that would otherwise have ended up in landfill. And I can still keep tying bits of fabric over what's already here and change it's colors that way.  Sort of a continuous wreathing project..... And I move it around a bit.  This week it's hanging on the back of the kitchen door.

Pillow from scrap fabric

When no longer needed, I think baby blankets make useful fabric pieces to make into other things and this fuzzy blue giraffe blanket just begged to be made into a soft pillow.  First, I embellished one side with some left over brown satin ribbon from the stash pile of fabric and findings that accumulates each time I do a clear-out of a closet or drawer.  I used brown ribbon as this blue pillow was to be paired with another pillow, also brown.  Putting right sides together, I then stitched three and a half sides, leaving half a side open for later insertion of the pillow stuffing.  After turning to right side out, I squeezed in the pillow stuffing (acquired on sale at in Walmart), then hand-stitched the opening and lo and behold, had another cute pillow for my son's bed. This project took hardly any time at all as I did the laundry at the same time, making for a very productive Monday morning.