Loose Change

My mother's church group in Oregon decided to hold a quilt show last year -- and it was so well-attended and so fun, they did it again this year!

For this years' show, the group issued a challenge that they called "Loose Change."  It was encouragement to people to go through their fabric stashes and use what they had.  Nickel packs (5-inch squares) were designated as "nickels"; "dimes" were 10-inch squares (otherwise sold as "Layer Cakes"); fat quarters were "quarters," of course; scraps were "pennies"; and 2 1/2-inch strips (often rolled together in sets and marketed as "Jelly Rolls") were designated as "dollars."  Over the first months of the year, Mom and her friend Debbie had plans to teach classes to show creative ways to use these elements in the creation of new quilts for the challenge.

Sadly, Mom was unable to participate much in teaching these classes.  Dad was hospitalized shortly after Christmas and spent about six weeks in critical condition in a hospital three hours from home.  Mom was given use of a room in the hospital and she took projects and sewing machines, but her time and focus was really spent helping Dad.  He passed away a couple of weeks before the quilt show, which was held in mid-April.

In January and February I went to stay with Mom.  We visited and planned late into each night, ate at restaurants, and did some fabric shopping.  She expressed interest in having a quilt pattern to give away at the upcoming quilt show that could use each form of their "loose change."  She also wanted to make a creative quilt that looked like it had money on the front and she found some fabric to put on the back that looked like dollar bills.  We had so many ideas!

Inspired by a quilt design we saw on the wall of a quilt shop, I came up with a pattern and made it in two colorways.  The first was done in kelly green batiks, along with other fabrics in hues suggestive of dimes, nickels, pennies and golden dollars; the other (surprisingly more popular) was in white with green  30's and 40's reproduction fabrics.  My sister, expecting her second child, expressed an interest in having the green one to match her children's bedroom -- so two more quilts were assembled, quilted and mailed for her birthday, later in April (one of these is pictured above).

The white sashing could have been cut from 1 1/4-inch strips, which is what we get when we cut the 2 1/2-inch "dollar" strips in half, lengthwise; instead, I cut 4 1/2-inch strips and sewed narrow lengths of green along the top:  the tiny green squares required slightly more than a single 2 1/2-inch strip could provide.  Sixteen 4-patch blocks were made from four of these 2 1/2-inch strips (two light and two darker).

5-inch "nickel" pieces, which could have been made into half-square triangle blocks, were cut down into 4 1/2-inch squares.  The seven 10-inch squares were also trimmed (to be 9 1/4"), to accommodate the units made by 2 1/2-inch strips; they could have been made into quarter-triangle squares with more work and a little less obvious waste -- but the idea was to keep things simple for the pattern.  The result was slightly larger than a square baby quilt; I added additional squares and some extra narrow borders to bring my green throw (pictured here, exploded and finished) to a more useful size.  This has been a pretty popular quilt around our house, resting at the moment at the foot of my bed.  My father-in-law particularly admired it, so perhaps a fifth one will be in the works for Christmas.

What with the interruption of a funeral and a load of other projects, this quilt was not completely bound by the time we were supposed to leave for the eight-hour trip to stay with Mom and help with her yard work (and quilt show) over Spring Break.  Mom's friend Debbie came to my rescue, hand-stitching the binding in time for the show!  A week or so later, when my sister's quilts arrived unbound (her new baby will be a girl and her old one is a boy -- and I wasn't sure how matched she wanted their quilts --), generous Debbie whisked the package home and promptly bound them for her.

Mom's idea for the quilt she could make for the show was simple enough, but she ran out of time.  She sent me home from the funeral with the fabrics we had bought when Dad was in the hospital, along with some simple verbal instructions.  Using fusible interfacing and sewing right sides together, I stitched around the edges of circles of fabric to make "coins."  Snipping around the curved edges of each seam allowance, I turned the fabric circles right side out through a slit in the interfacing and finger-pressed the curves until each circle was fairly flat.  It was a simple matter to iron these circles onto the charcoal-tone background sheet; they stayed in place as they were machine-stitched in place.  Pennies and nickels were appliqued with a straight stitch, but I used a more decorative stitch on the other coins to simulate the ridged edge of nickels, dimes, and so on.  It was machine quilted with a lavender metallic thread.  Mom had fun pointing out the "pair-a-dime" and the "two cents" in the corner.  She appliqued the quilt's title when she entered the quilt in a later show.