Meet Billie

Most of my fabric stash has a dubious pedigree. I'm rarely sure exactly what it is, or where it originally came from. Selvages might offer clues, sometimes confirming that it came from a quilt shop or big craft store.  Buttonholes or hems might suggest that it was originally clothing -- I've even had hunks of fabric still pinned to the tissue paper patterns. Sometimes there aren't any clues at all.

That's what happened with this quilt.

Here's what I started with -- long strips of pieced fabric that looks like it was originally shirts. Some unknown quilter spent a lot of time cutting and piecing them. A few of the bars are pieced and patched. I haven't taken a ruler to it, but I'm guessing these little bars finish at about 3/4."

So how did this wind up at the thrift shop? Was the fabric from shirts? Was it the beginning of a memory quilt? The leftovers of something bigger that did get finished?  

I don't throw out decent fabric. There's always something to do with it, even if I'm not immediately sure what. My first thought was to piece the strips side by side into a baby or wheelchair quilt then (after Sadie, because she's got me on a huge tea-dyed muslin kick and I've got a whole bolt of the stuff) I decided to add sashing.

And cut one of the strips in half, because that would mean more seams and a quilt just can't have too many seams.

I used polyester batting from the Mennonite store and quilted curvy lines with my walking foot. The guide broke, so I eyeballed the distance and it's surprisingly consistent. It's puffier than I like my own quilts to be, but it's not for me.  And even though I think it feels like a boy quilt, it's got a lot of pink in it -- so I gave the name a feminine spelling and I'll let someone else decide whether it's a boy quilt or a girl quilt.

I'm linking up to Whimsy Wednesday, Ivy and Elephants, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, and Freedom Fridays,