This quilt was inspired by an article in the New Yorker magazine about recycling steel. The picture accompanying the article showed a wall of crunched steel packed together that immediately brought to (my) mind a stack of wrinkled fabric.

After years of sewing I have an enormous stash of fabrics and this after many many spring cleanings and purgings. There are always pieces I can’t part with because I know I’ll use them. Someday.

I started by cutting/tearing rectangles out of a linen like fabric I had plenty of, to use as the backing fabric. I don’t like measuring or cutting. I prefer to tear fabric. I love the rough unfinished edge of it. After I tore a small pile of them, roughly the same size rectangles, I grabbed whatever fabric was at the top of the pile, tore it to the approximate length of the linen rectangle and started sewing it to one edge of the rectangle right side up, as a starting point.

I then folded the fabric over the stitched edge and sewed down another seam very close to the first stitching, creating a flap, making an effort not to sew a straight line and angling the fabric at one end.

I wanted this to be rough and wrinkly and it took some trial and error but I finally hit on a sewing technique that gave me that wrinkled surface I was after. As I sewed down each “flap” I not only angled but created creases by pulling the fabric one way, sewing a little ways and then pulling it another way and continuing the stitch. This crooked line created little “ditches” that were perfectly wrinkled once I turned the flaps down.

Each flap was ironed down after sewing with the flaps concealing the previous sewn line. Then a new piece of fabric was sewn underneath the previous flap so on and so on until the entire rectangle was covered with these wrinkled uneven flaps. I then ironed them all down and trimmed off the edges.

I call it Intoxicated Sewing. It was amusing to me how difficult it was to sew in this manner. All those years of trying to sew straight careful lines could not be banished as easily as I’d thought but once I got the feel for it, it was very liberating.

Once I had enough rectangles to sew together, I laid them out being careful not to place the same fabrics next to each other. I sewed them together right side to wrong side, as I didn’t want a normal seam which would have created too much bulk with all that folded over fabric and like I said, I like the rough edges. I started with the top row and sewed the other four rows in the same manner and then sewed those together to form the quilt. I could have sewed on a backing and maybe I will but I like all the wacky stitches in the back and since this will be hung and not laid on a bed or used in any other way, the back is fine the way it is. I’ve also considered whittling down some of my trimmings stash and adding it to the mix but I think I’m done. For now.

About the maker: Yolande blogs at hand and spirit studio, she sews, knits, makes jewelry and is currently painting her house. She is working on a new website to somehow contain it all.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 5:31 am and is filed under sewing+quilting+fabric. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.