Recycling win

Hi everyone, and welcome to the weekend! Hope everyone on the East coast has dug out from the storm. Yesterday someone said "hey, the sun's out," so I grabbed my coat and went out and just stood in the sunshine. It was great! Then I walked over to the library so I didn't look like such an idiot.

I have started on the BOM kit that I pulled out of the closet. (For now I'm calling it the Kaleidoscope quilt, but I'll probably change the name later.) Here's the first block:

Cute, huh? We'll talk more about that quilt later, because that's just here so that there's a pretty picture at the top of the blog. Our real subject today is this:

(I know--the floor needs refinishing. We just pulled up carpet that was covering it, so refinishing is the next step.)

Yes, friends, that is a quilt with the center cut out. Very nicely cut out, but cut just the same. I did not do it! (Sorry for the bleached picture. I was so sure I had a good one that I went ahead and worked on the quilt before I checked them properly. My bad!)

I got this at the quilt shop, believe it or not. There was originally a panel in the center, and whoever made the sample decided that's all of the quilt that she wanted or needed. I didn't get the whole story, but this part of it ended up in the shop's scrap table. So I bought it, extra cheap! (Less than $10, because the scraps are priced by weight!)

After I got it home I had to think hard about what to do with it. There really weren't a lot of choices, and it seemed like a shame to cut it into potholders or something. I really wanted to save as much of the pattern as I could. I decided that the only thing to do with this was to cut it into two long pieces to make a wide table runner. (I took the binding off part of it first.)

I straightened the edges and then butted them up together and zigzagged them together, like you do when piecing together quilt batting. I used a closer zigzag than I use for batting, and also slightly narrower.

Then I made two long strips to cover the stitching on the front and back. Even though the strips weren't cut on the bias, I used a bias tape maker because they fold the edges in so nicely. I stitched these down with a straight stitch using a zipper foot to get very close to the edges:

I fixed the binding and ta da!

The strip is not crooked at the end! It just looks that way in the picture!

A long table runner! I'm happy with this, and it saved that mutilated quilt. I call that a win! This measures about 23 by 60 (which also tells you something about how big that table is.)

I was lucky enough to find enough pieces to match the fabric on the top of the quilt. I even pieced matching lighter pieces at the ends of the strip.

You can barely tell there's a cover strip there.

A plain strip covers the stitches on the back because I didn't have matching fabric, but I don't think it matters.

 What about the other pieces I cut off? A little binding and they'll be 4 placemats! Double win!

So, I'm thrilled with this. It was fast, easy, recycled, and cheap! Plus it looks good finished. What else can you ask for?

Everyone have a great weekend. We are going to visit some relatives this weekend, which is better than it sounds because we genuinely like our relatives and enjoy spending time with them. Hope you have a win or two and maybe some nice time with family. Happy weekend!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Amanda Jean at crazy mom quilts and also Angela at soscrappy, because what is this if not blue scraps?

(Just a small reminder that Tuesday is the February installment of the Classic Stitches BOM. Come on and sew along!)