Acid green patchwork (+ a photo tutorial)

In my home there's a little bathroom near the kitchen. Its colors are acid green, white and dark brown (the door). Love this colors together!
Recently we bought a new piece of forniture in white.

I liked it, but its upper shelf seemed to me so empty!

So I decided to decorate it a bit with a piece made by me. It was a great occasion to use some green and brown fabric scraps I religiously saved :)

Time for patchwork!!!

 

This is what I made:

(I don't know how to call it, both in italian and in english... suggestions?)

 

The inspiration came from the book "The practical guide to patchwork" by Elizabeth Hartman. Of course her instructions in the book are for a big quilt, but I decided to work in smaller dimensions and to sew a block made of only 9 squares (adjusting the measurements).

 

I had a lot of fun taking photos of the whole process to share with you, but I didn't want to make this post too heavy, so I put them together in a collage with picmonkey.

The result is a sort of photographic (and intuitive) tutorial, similar to the one I made for my fabric peonies.

I also wrote a scheme of the measurements in my sewing notebook.

Hope these two little things will help you to make something for you or your home.

Fabric used for this project:

- dove-color leftovers (I used this fabric before for this bag for me and this bag for Gaf)

- 2 squares of fabric with paisley pattern (part of a batch of sample I received as a gift)... paisley is my new obsession!

- 1 square of recycled upholstery fabric (center)

- 6 squares of fabrics scraps I bought years ago from U-handbag shop, when Lisa, the owner, was selling bags of mixed leftovers of the fabrics she used to make her bag for the shop.

- dark brown fabric for the back

- a sheet of "spongy" interfacing

 

Now my bathroom is a happier place to be :)

A 100% recycled table runner for my kitchen

There's a colorful new thing in my kitchen.

It's 100% handmade and 100% recycled.

It's a table runner :)

To make it I used a big sheet of a fabric sample (part of a pattern book my friend Vincenzo couldn't use anymore in his shop).

This fabric is made of linen and synthetic fibers and generally used for kitchen curtains. I found it perfect for me: its colors match perfectly with my kitchen furniture (dark brown and white).

I cut it in two and make the "quilt sandwich": between the two sheets of fabric I put a sheet of foam originally used as part of the packaging of my bedroom's furniture. No new materials wasted for this project!

To give it a "quilted look" I simply stitched a straight line following the perimeter of the rectangles the fabric already had (it is a printed cloth).

Then I stitched other two lines, parallel to the first. Easy :)

This was my very first time in finishing quilt edges.

I followed a tutorial I found in Elizabeth Artman's book "Practical guide to patchwork" (a lovely book I've ordered and read last july); you can find this method also here. I finished the quilt with another sheet of recycled fabric in burgundy.

A simple project, not perfectly made, but perfect to bright up my kitchen :)