Nesting

We're decorating our rental. The landlord offered to paint before we moved in, but I need COLOR and I want to pick it out myself, so we made an agreement that he would pay for the paint if we did all the actual painting. So we started with these area rugs.


Pretty wild, right? But after living in a staged house for the last year, we were ready for something more "us." (That's Maude sneaking under the table.) Then I found this set of curtains at Goodwill. 96" (Ikea) curtains, $7. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but I figured for $7 they'd make a great addition to my slowly growing fabric stash.


I ended up deciding to put them in the kitchen. One thing led to another, and the kitchen ended up lime green. The dark brown is going on the metal interior garage door and will be mixed with unsanded grout to make a magnetic chalkboard. The lighter brown is on two walls in the living room, and the cream is everywhere else.

I sorted through my fabric and found several scraps that would make up a nice table topper or wall hanging.


I sketched a few possibilities, but I have sooooo many projects in my head that need to get out, not to mention the few that are already started, I realized I didn't have time overthink it. Inspired by the theme of "improvisation" at last month's Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting, I decided to just DO IT. I gave myself 60 minutes to see how far I could get without measuring or planning ahead. The idea was to just keep going. This is the result of one hour.


After two hours and some seam ripping, I declared it finished.


It measures 17"x18", so I'll probably add another inch to square it up and use it as a table topper. I've still got all those other fabrics to use -- napkins, pot holders, or...? --- plus the majority of the Goodwill fabric -- I only used the top 18" of one panel for this valance. I still need to hem it a couple inches and shorten the width, but I love it.


I'm pretty satisfied with my little improv experiment. I've got an almost-finished mini-quilt, something that never would have happened if I'd designed it to death.

On to the next project!