Unwanted to Quilt

Once a garment has for whatever reason become unwearable we think of it as trash. Not so in other countries, particularly in the east. For example, Japan has their traditions of boro and sakiori, and recycle so efficiently they could teach the rest of the world how to deal with their clothing waste.

Today I want to show you another way of recycling textiles: kantha quilts from India, which is a way of turning old saris and discarded textiles into quilts.

Here's a cutter piece from a kantha quilt. Kantha quilts are fairly easy (and cheap) to find on Etsy and eBay; I bought a bag of these scraps for my art quilting. It's a dense piece with simple running stitching which is easy to take apart. So let's see just how many layers it has.

According to some articles I read kantha quilting goes back at least 500 years. It was a way to creatively reuse old and unwanted clothing and create beautiful, colorful blankets for the family without having to spend money on new fabric. That's basically why American women started patchwork quilting here, too (we also couldn't get new fabric easily back when we were just the colonies.) Thriftiness and providing warmth have always been the quilting way.

Underneath the two outer layers of cotton cloth there's another bunch of layers held together by red running stitches. Let's take that apart and see what's inside.

I think the reason quilting still appeals to so many textile artists is that it comes from a long and rich tradition created by women for their families all over the world. It's the eternal hug from heart.

In the end my little swatch ended up having eight layers of cotton gauzy fabric in a bunch of different colors. I'm going to reuse them as backing for some of the mini-quilts from my 2025 calendar project so they don't go to waste, and I keep the tradition going. :)

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Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

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