Monday, December 15, 2003

Maddie's Quilt

I had wanted to experiment with block in a block. The opportunity arose when Pat and Maggie brought me some lovely green and purple fabrics from Africa and then proceeded to have a lovely daughter. This quilt was made for Madeleine Etienne Keenan as a baby gift.
Here's a picture of Maddie several years later.

Scrappy Postage Stamp Quilt

One of the things which makes quilting attractive to me is using all the scraps, using old fabrics, old clothes etc. The recycling aspect of quilting. But - I also LOVE new fabric and I LOVE buying, having and using new fabrics. So I don't do as much scrap quilting as I would like.

This quilt is truly a scrap quilt. I collected scraps for it for quite a while. My own scraps and scraps donated by others - or retrieved from trash cans at quilt retreats. I cut all the scraps into 2" squares and gradually sewed them into 9-patches. I don't recall how long it took, but it was something I would do in between everything else as I had enough 2"squares to make another couple of 9-patches. As finished, there are 360 9-patches in the quilt, which means that I sewed together 3,240 2" squares. I subsequently hand quilted it. And since it was finished it has been on our bed every night.