054 ~ From Nothing to Something! (April 2018)

I worked in a place where Cotton scraps (ends) of fabric (WOF) were being thrown in the garbage. It was a normal thing to do, so when I saw them, I asked if it was ok to take them home, a young girl in particular looked at me in a strange way and asked what I would do with them.  I said I'll show you one day. From there on, she was my biggest advocate for gathering these scraps in a plastic bag under the counter. It really didn’t take long for me to get enough together for what I had in mind.

I made a 6" template, and drew 1" - 2" lines on the template, cut those into the strips, then wrote the measurement of each strip - as to what I would need to cover that template with a strip of fabric.... and my "pattern" was born.

I had two constants in the blocks. #1- The center strip needed to be "black" or a black-ish coloured fabric. I had quite a lot of "blacks" in my stash that I could use. In particular a good amount of a zebra print fabric, which was perfect for what I needed .#2- the corner pieces needed to be a turquoise-ish colour.  I had a very little amount of turquoise in my stash, so I did buy a (sort of) bluish tone fabric which I placed in the corner pieces.

Now, many people would think I'm crazy, I LOVE the challenge of doing a project like this one.  I LOVE it!!! I didn’t use any kind of paper piecing, just sewed strips together until I had enough to cover the 6" template. Then I trimmed them, making sure the "black" strip was IN the center.

Once on the design wall, I decided how I was going to place the 6" squares, and which pattern I wanted to use. I chose the X kind of pattern, placed all the pieces in place, numbered them and sewed them all together in a 10 blocks by 14 blocks, pattern. There were 11 strips in each block (and about 6 blocks that needed a strip "patched together), which made a total of 1540 strips +?6 or so!!

The backing is another story. I was away on vacation, and when I came back to work this same young girl asked if I was interested in this "end of bolt" piece of fabric. It had been marked down to $3. (it was cotton). Um..YES I was interested in it.  Turned out to be just over 4 meters of fabric...  well, you know I had a place for it right? Not quite enough to cover the whole back, so I dug out some of the leftover WOF "garbage" pieces, and sewed them together to make a strip of strips for the middle of the backing.  Bingo!!  It worked!

Two things surprised me and I only saw them when it was all finished, and hanging on the clothesline (with brown grass, & snow covered background & a touch of wind) and that was how the zebra print fabric makes a bit of a shimmery (almost kaleidoscope) look, and how the black centers with the bluish corners, gives it a 3-D look.  Interesting!!!

When it was all finished, I took it to work to show it to the co workers, the young girl asked, is this from all those garbage pieces? Yep!! She was so amazed!! I said to her, this was great fun for me, and for you, it was meant to be a learning thing about garbage, and how you can make something from nothing.  So, fold it up, put it in the bag, take it home and enjoy its comfort. To say the least, she was in shock.  Perfect!!!  Mission accomplished!!