queen of thrift

This quilt is the reason my dining chairs aren't finished, the stairway project is half done and some blouses for the girls are just laying on the basement floor patiently waiting for me. Sometimes I just have to ignore what's supposed to get done and let a project make itself.

The center portion is from a pattern called Puss in Boots. It struck me as the perfect way to use up nearly all the scraps I had in large florals (most of which are Amy Butler). After making handbags or samples for the shop, I've been filing them away with fat quarters or in the scrap bag. The problem is that even though I find them beautiful, they just aren't the sort of fabrics I reach for when quilting. Year after year they were gathering dust. After cutting and piecing all the center nine patches I had far too many pieces left over. Instead of the single fabric border called for in the pattern, I pieced all the leftovers and I'm thrilled with how it looks. I'm even happier that it used up nearly all of the scraps.

The floral border quilting was done with free motion quilting on tissue paper. The design is one I'd saved from an old quilting magazine (the ones that you find in those pullout center patterns).

All the floral fabrics were scraps from the stash, the blue background fabric was thrifted and even the batting was pieced from scraps. That's not the only reason I named it Queen of Thrift though. It's really named for the recipient, Carol, who truly is the queen of thrift. No one knows her way around a thrift shop better. (So Carol, I'm hoping this makes up for the fact that I can never seem to remember your birthday on the actual day. The way I figure it, I get a few more years of bad memory out of this one!)