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What do you do when a friend gives you a huge bag of miscellaneous upholstery samples?
Intro
Intro
Sometimes, when you're an artist, people give you random things. In this case, I was delighted to receive a large bag full to the top with upholstery samples. It sat under my desk for a few weeks while I tried to figure out what to do with them. In the end, I decided that if I tried to use them individually, it might take me years. So, I decided to make a quilt.
They all looked roughly like the internet image I've included on the left: small rectangles of fabric glued or stapled to a paper card. They were not all the same size, shape or thickness but I figured I could make it work.
Part 1: Planning it out
Part 1: Planning it out
Materials: roughly 250 upholstery samples, a camera on greyscale mode, hours of sitting on the floor
I started by removing the paper from each sample. Sometimes, this was easy. Sometimes, I had to trim a sample and sacrifice some fabric because the glue wouldn't come off of an edge.
I set aside a small pile of samples that were linen (which I thought I could use for other things) and counted the rest, concluding that I could very nearly make a queen-sized quilt from what I had.
Then I spent hours arranging the samples from light to dark, using my phone camera on greyscale to help me when I couldn't guess.
I then laid them out on the floor to create a quilt with a rough gradient grouping them in blocks of 3 by 3.
I sewed them into blocks (this took some rearranging to get the different sizes to fit together) and then those blocks into strips.
When I laid them out on the bed, I began to see how it would look, but also that it was a bit too small. I sewed the strips together.
After lots of scribbling, I figured out how to cut up some spare fabric I had to create a 35cm border.
I attached the border to each edge.
And connected them diagonally at the corners.
At this point, it was looking great.
I bought a cheap duvet cover to use as material for the back.
And this is what the top of my quilt looks like so far!
TO BE CONTINUED...
I am at the stage in this project where I have done all the fun bits. I still need to buy batting to go inside the quilt, connect the three layers (probably by hand-tying hundreds of little ties), and put a border on it. I will update this blog when I get around to doing those things. But for now, I've at least used up my upholstery samples! (Although storing them as a quilt will take up even more space, so the joke's on me).
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