These have been brewing for a long time now, in one form or another.
When I first started quilting I was desperate to see any and all examples and we frequently travelled long distances to visit small village quilt shows just to fulfill that need. On one particular visit we saw all the usual suspects, all the traditional quilts, the appliqued quilts, the pictorial quilts, but we also saw one specific quilt that has always stuck in my mind. The show was held by the local quilters guild and as usual, was made up of mostly older members with a penchant for big flowery quilts. Which was why I was surprised when we were viewing the last row of quilts and there was one that screamed of originality
.
The quilt was made entirely of the selvedge of all the quilters cotton that the maker used. She had been collecting it for years and finally had enough to make a reasonably large quilt.
I loved being able to read the names of the fabrics she used and I loved the graphic pattern that the cut edges created.
Since then I've been collecting my selvedges in a big baggy. Not quite sure what I was going to do with them, but knowing that they were definitely worth squirreling away. (I've only ever shown the baggy to one person and even she looked at me like I was a little crazy!).
My post about Suzies pincushion the other day was a bit of a precurser to this one. I've been playing around with pin cushions for a while but have never been happy with the outcome. And I've been at the stage of wanting to use my collected selvedges for a while now too. But to be honest I haven't been able to face the idea of making a quilt out of them.
But then recently I was cutting the selvedge off a piece of fabric and tossed it to one side.as I always do. As I continued to work I glanced up and saw that the selvedge had landed on top of my pin cushion. And that quick glance sparked the whole idea. And I love it when that happens. because the ideas that come from catching sight of how different pieces work together, are usually the ones that work the best.
Sometimes when I start something new, I work at it and work at it and it just doesn't feel like the end results justify the amount of sweat that's gone in to it (made all the worse when friends or family see it and say 'oh that's nice"). But that wasn't the case with these. And not because I didn't put the work in. I mean I drew patterns and basted and everything! But the difference is these turned out exactly how I wanted them too. And even better, when family saw them, they loved them (I'm checking my mom's handbag when she leaves tomorrow!).
You know, when there are amazing examples like these , it's pretty hard to be happy with your own work, but I am truly happy with these. And better still, it's opened up a whole new avenue for me with using the selvedge. All this time I've been limiting myself to the idea of a quilt. But not anymore. And believe me, I've got a lot of selvedge saved, so we're going to be seeing it used in a lot more of my products.
These ones are over in the shop right now.
Bella is a lot better - thank you to everyone for your good wishes! And hopefully in a few more days she'll really be back to normal, but at the moment we're watching far more tv than I would like and eating far more chocolate, but what you gonna do?
