DK Quilt Guild: Found Treasures

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I am known in my quilt guild as the repository for “stuff”.  This includes small amounts of strange fabrics, unfinished blocks, bags of blocks finished and not plus the fabric to complete some unknown project.  The charity arm of our guild gets donations from sources far and wide.  Most of it is cut into 6 in squares, bagged 54 to a bag and sewn together for donation to children in social services.  We donate literally 100’s of quilts a year through Helping Hands/Caring Connections.

We also get entire sewing room contents when the quilter dies.  The families contact us to come and clean out/take whatever we can use because frequently no one else in the family quilts.  Often, these arrangements have been made in advance.  Mr Zen knows to call one of my guild sisters if something happens to me and they will take care of everything in my sewing room.  We always have the families with us to make sure no family treasures are sent off and to advise of anything we find that is valuable. We then use this fabric for our charity quilts or package it in usable amounts and sell it to ourselves for $1.00 a yard to raise money for the guild.  Everyone likes to do this.

But frequently, we find blocks, incomplete projects, cut fabric, misc things like that.  A lot of this is usually given to me because “You make magic with it, Cat.”.  So I have totes full of it and I have started to make very scrappy quilts with mismatched blocks. I call them UFO’s from people past. They go together so fast because everything is already made. It is challenging and fun to see what I can come up with from what I have.  Its kind of like making dinner from all the left overs in the fridge.  I also have a tote full of piano keys.  I am using them for the outside borders of these quilts because they are so scrappy that they tend to tie all of it together.  Here is one of the five I did last week.  You can see the wonkiness of it.  It is actually straight but the mismatched blocks give it that twisted effect. 

So, today while looking through the piano key tote, i found an entire cut bargello quilt waiting to be arranged and sewn!  There are 5 different sizes of strips and 3 strips of each.  One of each size has been cut so i know where she intended the design to start at the top.  I love bargello and have made a few.  In fact, one is on my bed right now! I will get the others done as I go along, getting them sandwiched at Helping Hands and giving the finished tops to them.  That’s why they keep me because otherwise, I am a great deal of trouble. I am writing this as it happened but now I will shift to the future and show you what I made from it.

(intermission music plays here.)

So, here is the finished product.

This picture looks very good on my phone but not so good here.  I wish I did a better job of photos.  This is quilted with feathers and if I say so myself, it is the best to date.