Designing as I go along!

When You Run Out Of A Fabric....

Well over a year ago I decided I wanted to make an old fashioned hand pieced Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt. I decided I had PLENTY of a certain green fabric on hand that I would border each of my flowers with just that one, so I started on my merry way:

Best laid plans of mice and men, as Robert Burns would say! Yep... ran out of that green fabric! And did not have enough to do anything really the way I wanted, but had already put together my pieces in a way that didn't lend themselves to incorporating OTHER greens in with them. The moral of the story is don't sew your pieces together as you go along I guess. *sigh* I had a very large square quilt unit. Not a comfortable size for much of anything. Stuck, stuck, STUCK in a mire of my own making! So... I framed it, looked at it, looked at it some more, and put it aside for a while and brooded on it.

Now, there is a LOT of hand stitching going on there. I'm not willing to give up and call that a big old square sofa throw! (Brood, brood, brood, pout, pout, pout!) I'm also not willing to throw ten unrelated borders on the top and bottom to make it long enough to cover the top of my bed! (Brood, brood, brood, pout, pout, pout!)  I finally came up with an idea that I thought might work, even though it would normally be way outside of my wheelhouse.... appliqué! I don't do hand appliqué as a rule. I don't feel like I'm very good at it, so generally I stick to machine piecing. But this had so much hand work to begin with, I figure... why not? So... I decide to make a pillow tuck with appliqué work on it.

Not too bad for someone who doesn't do much of this sort of thing. So now I attach that to the body:

Ignore the ripples and wrinkles... it really does lay flat, I promise. I'm just having some trouble getting down to the floor this morning. LOL! 

So now all I have to do is design the side and end drops and I'll have a bed quilt again. I guess I'm back to the brood and pout stage until I come up with ideas for that, because I REFUSE to applique all of THAT! LOL! But at least I feel like all of that work wasn't wasted.

Happy Quilting!

Jean MaDan