Maggie Malone's Quick Quilts

     My favorite part of quilting is playing with patterns to make them easier to piece, as well as designing new patterns.  Below is my latest one which I called Rainbow.
                     

     My original design featured large white rectangles which provide a lot of room for quilting.  But since quilting is my least favorite part of the process so I opted to make colored strips to break up the plain white.  This let me do stitch in the ditch quilting.  This a a large 24" block so it works up quickly.

 

    

 I like a lot of color, but if you don't, you could use just one. 

     The next one I am really proud of.  I was so taken with the Wheel of Fortune design, but when I realized each block contained 32 pieces, I had to think about it.  

     By combining the pattern pieces, I was able to cut the number to 16, and they were strip pieced before cutting.  I completed 25 blocks in 12 hours.  Now that's a time saver.

     I am a packrat.  I find it very difficult to throw away anything that I might sometime in the distant future, find a use for.  This began with my children's clothing, from the time they were born up until they moved out.  Now you know that kids don't usually wear out clothing, they outgrow it.  This is all perfectly good fabric and how can I possibly throw it away?  After the clothes consumed a 3'x10' closet, and trash bags were all over the house, I knew it was time to do something with them.  So, I started a book I'm calling "101 Uses for Old Clothing".  I may not make it to one hundred, but I am up to 50.  Below is a sample rug I made from old sweatshirts.  Some of these do get raggedy, but there is still lots of good fabric to be had.

     I think this is a good use for old sweatshirts.

     My current downfall is the plastic bags every stores packs your purchases in.  I am again losing a closet, so I decided I needed another rug, this one crocheted.  I cut the bags into strips and used the strips as yarn.

     I used a contrasting color to lace through the mesh for four rows just to see how it would look.  I did one similar to this for the above mentioned book using yarn as the mesh, but then threaded fabric strips through the mesh running the strips lengthwise over the whole surface and leaving a fringe at each end.

     I am currently working on a shopping  bag from the plastic bags.  I'll post a picture when I complete it.