recycled quilt

That is my kitchen - It got taken over with fabrics.  That is a baby quilt I made. I used some of the extra blocks from a past quilt to finish it off.

I made a quilt from a pattern in the book "Material Objects 2" Here are some pics of how mine came out -

Im learning how to piece blocks that are all one finished size. Im a slow learner. One of the pleasures of making free form quilts is there is no seam allowance, there is no matching - who cares? Well, Ive made two years of those quilts and needed to move onto a new something. Piecing! Im loving doing the work. I like cutting fabric, I love sewing it. I like looking at how the colors come together. Im not so good at coming out with one size blocks when Im done. I just finished making -78 blocks that were supposed to finish at 12 by 12 inches. Most of them finished at 11.5 by 12. So thats fun, right? Its a PITA to do new things and fail at them. But, its the way of learning. And, I am learning. Here are some pics of the quilt I am working on i think that it will be a nice quilt when it is finished i want it to be about a queen size - I bought the batting today.

3 inch unfinished squares are sexy. I cant get away from them! Here is another quilt made from them - entirely. No strip piecing! This is the top - This is after quilting - Close up of quilting -  I used my "extreme recycled batting" cheat for this quilt. I have so much old 70's double knit in my stash - I keep piecing together enough to fill a quilt and -- MAN can I tell you how perfect the weight is? And the quilts have a drape that my other quilts with traditional batting dont have. So, Stuff old crap fabric inside your quilts - its gets rid of trash - and trash has a great drape! I think the layer of poly will be warm -- w/o being gross warm. Because its just one layer of fabric. Not the thickness of a poly batt.

OMG! - My friend got the tablecloth she had me make -- !

I had been working in the Garden - we have a small area in the front of our house and on the side of the house where there is about a 5 foot piece of land that we can put a flower garden in. A friend of mine came over and really helped me get motivated to get the back garden done. I worked hard tog et the front one done - but, always neglect the side. Now, it looks great back there. Next summer it will fill in and look so full and flower-y! I cant wait.

My Grand Mother is a first class lady and a huge hoarder. She has a 8 bedroom farmhouse packs frull of stuff and, good for her!

These are coverletts - and very light applique tops -- They are ment to go to the beach or on the couch ... on the wall .. or, on the bed on a hot night. Just applique on top of sheets ... very easy and fast. Quilt show for the July art walk at Mesa Verde.

Can you see the wind power mills in the WAY back of the first pic?

I just finished this quilt - it was a half swap with a friend of mine. He put up some trim in my house and I made a quilt for his wife!

MESA VERDE MEXICAN RESTAURANT 618 Congress Street, Portland, Maine, 04101  

Well, I still need to bind. I am in love with this quilt. The free motion quilting is the best Ive ever done. Recycled fabrics - 100%! And recycled soda bottle batting. I love this quilt.

My mom come to visit last weekend. She layed on the couch with my doggies in the morning. They looked like they loved making a new friend!

the table cloth quilt made it to its new home. this is all made with applique and scraps. the batting is my radical recycled batting and the back is some thick old polyester i found. there is free motion quiting in every block - the straight stitch machine did all of the work with no problems. a standard domestic could not have done some of the thickness.

i use everything fabric in my quilts. my neighbor tossed a giant bag of used painting clothes on the sidewalk last summer. i brought the whole bag up here and boxed it up for "later." I loved the textures of the paint. but had no sewing skills and did not want to mess up the fabric. this is a blog about how I used the heavy sweaters, and sweat-material as batting. here are a few pics... i just cut up the material at the seams and lay one piece in at a time. i dont pin my quilts to quilt them. i HATE pins. its easy to lay in some thick fabric - sew over it - then lay in more.. repeat, repeat. after putting the layer of "batting" inside the quilt - flop the top back over and quilt away. with enough stitching - or tight enough channeled quilting those inside pieces are not going anywhere. i sometimes use scraps as batting also - i dont worry about making a flat inside because i like lumpy quilts. i dont try to have a perfect coverage either. i jus...

this is a raw edge applique quilt. i cut out blocks of tee shirt fabric, in any size. big, small, medium. and used a blanket stitch to sew random blocks down to the foundation (a thin old sheet.) the best thing about using an old sheet as foundation is.. the quilt will come out a perfect size.

ive made some nasty quilts. i feel like im ready to sew a new quilt right over the old ones that suck. i want to just make new tops and cut off old bindings and sew the new tops on and put on new bindings. my quilts will end up like dig sites in the future. or, the thing that never will dry and molds. if i quilted a new top over an already made quilt that would be a heavy ass quilt! i love heavy quilts. i started a jeans quilt tonight -- but, its not boring because the jeans are all jeans that a painter tossed out. so, they have all this paint stuck on everywhere. pretty cool looking. maybe ive got a new front for this ugly ass quilt! i made this b-4 i ever heard of the gees bend quilters, it was one of the first quilts i ever made.

  i made this quilt from old red and white sheets. it has a blanket on the inside - and another old sheet on the back. its channel quilted in narrow lines. usually when i channel quilt i will use a longer stitch and quilt as thin or thick lines as i please. a nice part about using old blankets a batting is ... you dont have to worry about them falling apart in the quilt the way that batting that is new will fall apart if its not quilted to death. think about how cheap polyester comforters get balls of batting in them.. i did not measure or worry about stripe size, i just tore apart the white and red sheet then used a small stitch to sew the stipes together. easy.

i love to free motion quilt. i like circles and patterns but, also really likes lines, grids and cross hatching. i fee motion quilt using my domestic sewing machines. i have one of the high speed straight stitch only machines. i just got the machine a few months ago and i love it! it seems like the faster i free motion quilt the better my results are. the domestic machines were way to slow for me. even for piecing the machines were too slow. above is some of the stitches made with the high speed machine. im very happy with the way they look. that was a quilt i made for a friend. its 100% polyester - i found boxes of the fabric last summer and saved every box! i love quilting with the polyester. i stitched out that pattern over the top of the whole quilt - at high speed! it was fun - but, might have looked better if I did lines instead.

im a young (ish) woman. im obsessed with quilting. my name is taffy pulls. (like the candy) when i was younger i had a vintage shop and was obsessed with fiestaware. color was always fighting with recycling as my focus at the shop. i wanted to make my corner of the world bright and fill it with old used things. i thought everyone wanted bright, used stuff in their house ... but, that was around the time organic took over the world and a new form of hotel living style took over decorating. i took a few years off from the creative world and went back to school to study ... politics ... and buy a micro house ... and adopt some dogs .. then, came the creative bug again. so, i started to sew. ive been sewing a little over a year and im hooked.