When I was a child, I thought, ‘Why cut up beautiful pieces of fabric just to sew them together again?’
I loved the pretty fabrics just the way they were.
It wasn’t until much later, in adulthood, in fact, that I discovered the joy of creating patterns from beautiful fabrics.
I was overjoyed when Patricia offered to teach me to quilt. She started me off with crazy patch. Serious quilters wouldn’t consider crazy patch real quilting at all. Traditionally from North America, it is, arguably, simply fabric art. Or textile art if you add fancy machine and hand stitching or lace in the ditches like this one.
But crazy patch was a start and since Patricia had, over the years, given me many fabric off-cuts, it was an opportunity to use up a lot of little bits that might otherwise have found their way to pre-schools, op-shops or landfill. I should point out here, I’m big on recycling. As a consequence, I’ve made many quilts from fabric bits. Here is another, not only using bits in ‘blocks’ but also bits to make the outer sashing.
This is an ‘I Spy’ quilt that should keep the kids occupied for ages. The inner sashing is different colours because I didn’t have enough of one colour to complete it.
The wadding is 93% cotton and 7% polyester and most of the patches are 100% cotton, however some are polycotton. I’ve used these bits of polycotton in my learning process, but won’t do this in formal quilt patterns. There really is no substitute for cotton in quilting.
I’ve crazy-patched the fabric onto A4 blocks of material I didn’t like. Most people use paper for this stage and carefully rip it off before assembling the quilt. I saw that as a waste of time. I had some wincyette (flannelette to Australians) with a dye fault and saw crazy-patch as an excellent opportunity to use it up.
It also adds to the thickness and warmth of the finished quilt. I’ve found fabric in op-shops with a dye fault or a pull in the weft or weave. Great material to use for this purpose, new, warm, and accessible at a reasonable price.