I’ve been working for over a year on preparing for an eventual move to a retirement community, and that involves lightening the load of culch most of us accumulate. (Culch/cultch, the Maine word for the pile of stuff that accumulates on any non-rolling household. Learned from Louise Dickinson Rich’s books when we first moved to Maine.)

I inherited big piles of household linens, both commercial and handmade, mostly from my grandmother.

My grandmother, wedding photo from 1907

Here is some of her needlework:

One end of a dresser scarf. She made a number of dresser scarves.

This is the cover for a large pincushion, intended for hat pins. It matched the bedspread in the next picture.

This is the center medallion on the matching bedspread.

Another dresser scarf

I’ve had these linens for years without doing anything with them, and they aren’t my style. Finally I found a solution! I sent them all to a friend who loves vintage linens and knows a lot about them. It’s a win-win. The items have found an appreciative home and I don’t have to worry about them any more!

I had a few fat quarters of Lotta Jansdotter fabric left from many years ago and thought I would make a “Turning Twenty Again” quilt from them. Although that pattern almost always produces something nice, the proportion of the various prints didn’t work out well this time. The quilt looks like it has measles.

On the theory of “if it doesn’t work, cut it up” I did cut it up and added some bright green. I like this a lot better.

The binding will be bright green to hold all the craziness in, and I trust some kid at Ronald McDonald House will enjoy it.

Do you cut up things that aren’t working? Or give them a time out? Or give them away?

My friend Michele finished her tiny village:

And I made a couple of tops for myself.

Both these were made from quilting cotton. The one with all the letters (they say nothing, so don’t try too hard) was from the sale shelf and I made this boxy top to try out a pattern. The border print was a bolt end that I found while browsing (when I probably should have stayed home, but oh well).

So it was a fun, low-stress week! Do you make clothes? If so, what patterns do you like?

When I finish a quilt I cut any scraps into strips of standard width and store them in little drawers by size. So when I came across this pattern from an old issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited, I was ready to go.

This quilt was designed by Elaine Schmidt, whose website is here.

These blocks finish 20″ square, so this was quick to make despite the multiple little trapezoids in the centers. In fact it was so much fun (and I have so many scraps) that I may make it again.

Meanwhile it’s going to the friend who quilts our donations for Flying Horse Farms. Here’s a picture of the last load of quilts she delivered from our group–I love the stack of colors!

Any fun scrap quilts at your house?

Remember my single EPP flower?

I put it together with 4 other orphan blocks and made a little quilt, and a friend quilted it.

The 4 other blocks were made from this pattern:

This pattern is Bubbles by Aylin Ozturk. It is available through PayHip, here.

Although beautiful, these log cabin dot blocks were tedious in the extreme so I quit at 4.

This little table runner is for the “boutique” one of my guilds will have at their quilt show.

Runner from the book Tabletastic!2 by Doug Leko.

I’m working on some other little quilts for Ronald McDonald House as well, so stay tuned…