Repurposing with a Purpose

About nine years ago, a group of my quilting friends joined together with me to finish and/or repurpose an overwhelming pile of unfinished teaching and shop samples from my long career as a shop keeper.   Most of the pile is gone and in the past few years we've found ourselves repurposing other quilters' UFQ's!!

We are preparing another batch of small quilts to share in our community during the Christmas season and I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the inspiration that comes out of this group these days! 

 

This little charmer began as a shop sample -- just the appliqued heart block in the middle -- and with the help of a stack of stash rejects, it grew into this delightful piece.

My mother loved to make "pillow quilts" and hoarded lots of panels to use for the pillow part.  When she passed, her stash went into our resource boxes and this fall, one of the gals organized this for a little girl who enjoys dolls! 

These two stars were left over from something or a project that didn't get very far -- who knows at this point.  It's going to be perfect for a little boy!

A pile of purple and green inspired by four orphan blocks is now a cheerful quilt that we hope will be treasured by a young girl who just got her own bed, maybe even her own bedroom? 

Once upon a time there eleven blocks that needed another one to complete the set and then one got lost and there were only ten -- oh, dear!!  Have you ever tried to make one more block . . . . it never matches!!  Sharyn Craig's book, Setting Solutions, provided the inspiration for this setting!!  If you don't have it, you should and it's now available again!!  Check it out HERE on Amazon.

Where's the tenth block -- cut into fourths for the corner stones! 

There weren't enough of these log cabin blocks to even make a wallhanging but look what we were able to do -- another quilt for a lucky boy!

The next three quilts are triplets -- they were a set of 23 blocks I've had in my stash for about 25 years -- one block short of the setting I designed -- no idea why I stopped at that point.  They are lovely blocks and it was a shame to keep sitting on them so we created these quilts using the same setting but different fabric arrangements.

 We kept running out of fabric, but I always consider that to be a great spur to creativity.



We are still quilting these three and I'm pleased to finally have them in quilts and about to bless three little girls.

I think this one is my favorite from this fall's crop of repurposed salvages.  Given to us (perhaps anonymously), they've been ignored by us for quite a while.  Finally this fall, one of the gals took them on and isn't it great!!  Centering the green block establishes balance perfectly.

We still have a couple weeks of quilting and binding but once again this Christmas we'll be able to present a symbol of hope and compassion to eighteen young children and that feels really good!!

 

Have a peaceful, piece-filled weekend!!

 

Mary Huey