A Sure Sign Of Desperation

I went to a meeting of the Modern Quilt Guild the other night.  It was fun. I was an hour late and they didn't hold it against me.

 

It was a scrap swap night. The scraps I got were all selvedges.  I have a month to make something and then get it back to the owner of the scraps.  Yes, my swap partner got denim.  Selvedge fabric is not something I would normally work with but that's totally the point, right?  After some googling around, I decided to bargello them.  Mine will be way simpler and small, like, doll quilt sized.  Also black and white for obvious reasons.

 I sewed together the scraps to make them longer.

That's thing with the red edge is a spool I had used as a stamp for some mail art.  I don't know why it's in this picture. 

 Then I trimmed them down so they were all tidy.  Here are the leavings. 

Then I had to line them up.

 Next step, sewing them together and then making them into a tube.  To be totally honest, I stopped here because I was bored out of my little mind.  There are more reasons that I like to make random, crazy quilts than just my obvious laziness.  I had always heard that quilting could be boring and now I believe it.  Is that awful?  I knew I didn't really care for the look of traditional quilts but now I know that the process is duller than dull, too.  I will finish it because, well, I have to.  But that day, I put it aside in order to clean my house.  And if you know me at all, you know that's a sure sign of desperation.  Wish me luck.  :)

Keep It Cool

We have a couch in our kitchen in the place of a kitchen table.  It's the most popular seat in the house. I usually just buy the cheapest and cleanest love seat I can thrift because they are fairly disposable.  We do eat on them after all.

 This one is pretty comfy but the throw pillows were very poorly sewn together and have been falling apart, so I decided to recover them.  

  I thought it would be so smart to re-use the baby quilt backing that I had unsewn and some nice, soft, red stretch velvet that I had on hand. Thinking myself clever should have been my first warning. 

 

I don't know what I did wrong.  I measured really carefully but they ended up being way too small.  Getting those pillow forms in there was quite an impressive but ultimately pointless feat. 

 Sausages.

Just compare the pillow size here with the picture above.  ...sigh...

So, I took them apart again and used some of the denim squares that were sitting and waiting for me to think about them again. True to form, I overcompensated in the other direction and now they are really loose.  I think I'll need to unseam them on one side and wrap the pillow forms with quilt batting and sew them up again.  How clever!  They'll be perfect!  WARNING WARNING!!  

I had better keep it cool.