Kitchen Towels & Washcloths - made from tablecloths

I halfway-made some kitchen washcloths and towels this week ...

Halfway, because I made towels & washcloths out of tablecloths.

The thrift store was having a sale, so I got a couple of tablecloths for a dollar each. (Or was it a dollar fifty? Either way ...)

I liked the feel, the weight, the little bit of texture, and the 100%-cotton-ness. And I liked the price!

Not needing any tablecloths, though, and not being able to leave well-enough alone, I decided to make them into kitchen towels and washcloths. (In a previous blog post, I mentioned doing something similar last year. Other kitchen linens are mentioned here and here.)

Handy-dandy serged edges for all. 

I made a half-dozen washcloths AND a half-dozen kitchen towels from EACH tablecloth!

I love my new kitchen towels & washcloths - AND I love the price! Since each tablecloth yielded a dozen items, the price was way better than even the cheapest kitchen linens out there. LOVE IT!

Pink flowers on a spike that grow from a bulb ...

So, Saturday on my blog is for flowers ... 

(I'm not sure why. It just works.)

Today's flower is a mystery to me, because I'm not sure what this one is called.

Our neighbors had some of these at the edge of the back of their yard, and they said we could dig one up a couple years ago ...

I thought it was gorgeous, so I dug one up and planted it ... and it's blooming!

It's just one tall spike, with two or three flowers blooming at a time. Nifty.

If you know what this flower's called, jot me a comment so I'll know ...

~ * ~

And God said,
Let the earth bring forth grass,
the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit tree
yielding fruit after his kind,
whose seed is in itself,
upon the earth:
and it was so.

Genesis 1:11

~ * ~

Vintage-Sheet Kaleidoscopes

In addition to the vintage sheet I found at the thrift store for my last project, I found this one ... Same pattern in a different color scheme. Different day, same store. (What are the chances?)

This is the exact same kind of sheet that my grandmother always kept on her guest bed. The sheets we used when we were there. 

In a couple of recent posts, I showed bits of this project ... (here and here).

I made 4-patch kaleidoscopes ("stacked posies") for the quilt top. I love the look of quilt-y kaleidoscopes!

I had another white sheet which became the alternate squares.

Since my grandmother had these exact sheets, it was such fun to work with something so familiar and cheery.

For the back, I used another piece of sheet, with some of the oxford squares I've been working on.

I love all the cheery, light, summery colors!

I quilted it with my favorite kind of free-motion "doodling" all over.

I'm fascinated by the styles and techniques of quilting that can be done with a regular sewing machine. My skills at free-motion quilting are pretty basic, but I'm impressed by the kinds of ideas that I find online, especially The Free Motion Project and Crazy Mom Quilts. 

I made this little quilt for my mom for Mother's Day (one reason why I only put sneak peeks on the blog beforehand.)

I figured she'd recognize the sheets that matched her mom's sheets, and she did.

The little oxford squares gave a little interest to the back, in (mostly) matching colors. (I included purple squares, to round out the color "rainbow", even though there's no other purple in the quilt.)

The quilt is square, fifty-something inches, a nice summery throw-sized quilt, and I had a lot of fun working on it.

Since this is a finished project, I'll be linking this post to this week's Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other quilters have been finishing there.

Saturday Flowers

On my blog on weekends, I like to post pictures of the flowers I'm enjoying in my yard ...

The pink/red/white ones are Sweet Williams that I planted a couple years ago. 

They keep coming back! 

The dark purple ones are May Night Salvia, perennials that I've enjoyed for a couple years. 

These colors look so elegant together, and somehow, I think they give this part of the flowerbed a "classy" look.

~ * ~ 

To every thing

there is a season,

and a time

to every purpose

under the heaven

Ecclesiastes 3:1

~ * ~

Vintage Sheets in a Quilt

Like I said in a recent post, it's apparently all the rage to use vintage sheets in making quilts. And, no wonder, since lots of older sheets were well-made, are still in good condition, and have pretty designs that you just don't see any more.

Not long ago, I was surprised to find a sheet set I recognized at the thrift store. (Gotta love thrift-store fabric!) This sheet is the exact kind that my grandmother ALWAYS kept on my great-grandfather's bed. I've never seen one just like it anywhere else. 

Naturally, I had to buy the set. ($2.00 for the set of two? Yes, thank you!) And, naturally, I had to make something special. For starters, I added some snowball corners (of shirt fabric) to squares of the vintage sheet, and to squares of another (not-so-vintage) sheet.

The snowball-corners construction is just like one of the window-quilts I made a few months ago. I talked about the style & inspiration for that one in this post.

I made the quilt top big enough to be a nice throw-sized quilt, added backing and batting and "doodled" all over it with a basic free-motion quilting design.

Did I mention that I just discovered how much easier a darning foot makes the job?! A while back, I found a ridiculously great deal on a basic, simple, no-frills, old-but-barely-used sewing machine ... The sewing machine came with a walking foot and a darning foot!!! Super deal!

I actually got this little quilt put together pretty quickly, which was nice.

I love how the finished product looks from different angles.

The back is a nondescript, non-vintage cotton sheet. (Actually, I found TWO king-size sheet sets on clearance at Wal-Mart: the good kind, 100% cotton, 300 count, solid colors, $11.00 for each set! Again, that's my kind of deal!) And, the quilting is not perfect, but I'm getting better at it.

Up close, the "plain" blocks actually have a tiny tone-on-tone print. I think this makes the quilt a little more interesting, without making it overly busy.  

Another angle-view of the finished quilt, which turned out to be 53" x 63".

And, I think this quilt will live for a while on the cedar chest my grandfather made for me ...

Reading quilt blogs and seeing other people's quilt-process pictures is something that's helped me improve my quilting skills tremendously. It's also something that gives me continual inspiration for what's next on my quilting project-list.

This week's "Finish it up Friday" at CrazyMomQuilts is a great place to see what some other quilters have been working on. CrazyMomQuilts is one of my all-time favorite quilt blogs, and I'm linking this post there, and looking forward to catching some more inspiration.

Kaleidoscope Cutting

I love Quilt-y Kaleidoscopes, and I'm working on some new ones ...

The other day, I cut some 60° triangles out of 4-inch strips of 6 layers of stacked pattern-repeats. (Yeah, that sentence was about as clear as mud ...)

I have a new ROTATING cutting board, which is awesome!

And I ended up with a stack of enough triangles for 48 kaleidoscopes ...

I love watching these come together. And I love that they're all so different, even though they're all cut from what used to be a single piece of fabric.

Bits of Free-Motion Quilting

Lately, I've been doing a lot of this:

That picture in my last post? Here's how it looks quilted: 

Here's the quilting on the back of another project.

I don't have a whole blog post ready yet for either of these projects, but stay tuned for more details in a few days!

Little Squares on White

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I've been sewing on some vintage-sheet projects, which is lots of fun.

And, the vintage sheets look great with my little oxford squares, which is lots of fun.

I'll plan to have more pictures in a few days, but for now, here's a bit that I sewed up yesterday.