Thursday, April 5, 2012

"Super Scrappy"


It's been a long time since I finished a quilt.  But hey!  I finished a quilt!  

This one follows all of the rules of the "StormQuilt" series of 20 blankets that I was theoretically going to blast out in 2008, and of which 13 have so far been completed.  That's to say, it is made of 100% scrap, salvage, and recycled materials.  In fact, it is more scrappy than most of the stormquilts -- a lot of the fabrics in this one are old shirting, khaki, felts, seersuckers, upholstery fabrics, synthetics -- stuff that is generally garbage unless you have a lot of it.  This abundance of odd materials gives the piece a very textural feel -- it's kind of fun to run your hand across it.  And hence the name, which wasn't a choice so much as just what I started calling it: "SuperScrappy."

It doesn't count as a StormQuilt, though, because neither its construction nor its quilting were designed for speed.  In quilting it, in fact, I put a short line along every seam in every block; you quiltheads will realize that this meant many, many hours of burying threads.  Teeeeedious!

Everybody gets excited about how you can seem to see tricolor flags in it, but that wasn't on purpose.  Still, there's an awesome Hungary, Luxembourg, and Sierra Leone in there, if you go looking.



The Specs

Serial Number: 60

Dimensions: 75" x 82"

Batting: Damaged flannal sheet.
Backing: Two pieces of very low quality flannel, discarded by Mom5000.

Begun: Unknown, c. 2008
Finished: March, 2012

Intended Use/Display: Uncertain.

7 comments:

margaret said...

Congrats! It's beautiful. I love that it recycles stuff and also shows a flaggy motif but with flora flourishes here and there.

Christine M. said...

Super!

dhkendall said...

Oh, come on, the flags have got to be deliberate, knowing you! :)

(BTW, there's also a Haiti and a Serbia/Russia (depending on which way you're looking at it) there too ... )

mrs.5000 said...

I do like the colors in this quilt--I think it does surprisingly well, considering I'd class the individual fabrics in it in the neutral-to-ugly range--but I also have to say I've noticed it looks very nice in the dark. I mean, when there's just enough light to see blacks and grays, those gradations, and the simplicity of the pattern, are quite handsome.

Rebel said...

Hey - look! You made a quilt! I like it... the pattern with white sashing is a good way to show off scrappy fabrics. And I like the assortment of colors. Very nice indeed!

Michael5000 said...

Thanks Reb! I had just enough of a thin white flannel to handle the internal sashing; the last lap framing the whole quilt is about 3/4 of a yard of scrap linen. The whole thing came out better than expected, and I'd immediately start making more if I could figure out a quicker way to quilt it that made sense.

Jenners said...

Love it!