Silver Linings Crazy Quilt~ the full story!

Hello my awesome readers!

You know all of your comments have made me a 'bold and cRaZy crazy quilter' and recently on my Google plus page a lovely comment came from a reader of mine regarand I posted a link to the original post on my "Silver Linings Crazy Quilt" and as I read over it, I realized that I never really got down to the nuts of bolts of crazy quilting ~Carli Style, you know?

If you want to read the brief starting post on this awesome award winning quilt, you can pop over to the post Silver Linings Crazy Quilt.

So here goes with my story. I had some hurt feelings to be perfectly honest. I was and I still am very concerned that our environment is being threatened. Having said, this at the time, my hubby worked for the government and if you have a hubby with a government job, you ask about the confidentiality agreement all gov. employee's are asked to sign. I was at a quilting meeting and I spoke about the reuse that I do in my quilts. 



This one above was made on commission of a Canadian Air Force female pilot and she had retired some years before and this was made from reuse everything except the little square solid colors in the corner. But I digress, I was astounded at the complete silence in the room. A room of some 20 odd women were so quiet you could have heard a pin drop! I was surprised and tried to stumble through a finish to my little talk and as I started, the Pres. stood up and went on to another topic for the meeting. I was confused and then as the meeting went on, I was suddenly not being talked to and pretty much I got a snub if I ever saw one!



This lovely lady from Smithers was so into re-purposed quilts that she showed me one she had made from the tops of the long winter wool men's socks, it was a double sized and so toasty! Wow!

I stuck it out the rest of the evening, but it was the last time I went back to that group. Funny, no one called about where I was I even months later, no one was sad to see me go, I realised.

I decided then and there that those poor ladies just didn't know what they were missing. I started the award winning quilt on graph paper that night. I'd show those ladies what you really could do with re-purposed materials in an effort to point out that re-purposed materials are just fine. I never suggested that I advocated using rags! So it was born.




Later that year, we relocated to Nelson, B.C. and I was relieved to find that many Kootenay Quilters are on board with reusing. There are many 'hippies' living in Nelson, so they already had an understanding that when supplies are sparce, you use what you have on hand, many quilts have been made from clothing that the women of the house just couldn't throw away! Frugality!




This "Silver Linings Crazy Quilt" was made out of 99% of re-purposed materials. I started with women's sized blazers that had interesting lining colors, all the linings were acetate as usual, so this acetate burns super fast under your iron and so BE FAST when pressing it.

I made this quilt in 9 blocks with a sashing in between. The sashing was made from acetate as  well and really was hard to get it to stay straight even after pressing the 1.4 overlap on either side of each sashing piece. So this made the whole process slow down, it was so difficult to work with that I actually had to press, pin down and then for extra security that each sashing didn't move, I hand basted each sashing down and then over stitched with the sewing machine.




I use this quilt as much as I can in my small home. I lack wall space in this house. So this was in the hallway off the dining room over this past Christmas. This quilt has labels recovered from various articles of clothing, all the embroidery is done my hand, the border sports very tentative swirl of machine quilting. Each edge of sashing has a single line of machine quilting which was done before the border went on to the quilt sandwich.


So I'm hoping that many of you will consider using re-purposed materials in your next quilt or every quilt you ever make.


I'm getting excited, I still pinch myself when I look at the fact that I've got 94 followers on my blog!

Carli

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