Monday, June 20, 2011

What's old is new again - the kitchen!

Two houses ago now I used the Posh fabric line by Chez Moi for Moda to redecorate our kitchen. When we sold the house, I left most of the window valances, but I still had a table topper and a small quilt that I kept on the island.
In our next house, I thought I'd use those pieces in our guest room, but then another fabric line caught my eye. So the table topper and mini quilt were stored away.
Which brings us to this house! Our kitchen in Seattle was a pale minty green color when we moved in. I like the color, but we were planning on painting it something different. And then I noticed that the 3 light fixtures in the kitchen have the same green accent color in them. We are renting, so painting the fixtures was out of the question. And buying new fixtures while storing the originals seemed like a silly idea. So I decided to work with the green...and that's when I remembered that I had a few totes of quilts and table toppers in the basement.
Most of what I found was seasonal, but I also found the perfect accents for the green kitchen!
The island and Addy's table:
 Addy's little  table with the mini quilt:
 The island again:
 The other side of the table topper:

A few notes: the mini quilt was made from a single charm pack. I used a pattern, but I can't remember the name (I thought it was Charm School but a quick google didn't bring up the right pattern). I included batting in the mini, quilted SID, and stitched yellow buttons down all over the top.
The table topper was done in a flip and sew technique*. I pieced it in 4 log cabin style blocks (no batting) and then stitched the 4 blocks together, added borders with the flip and sew technique, and bound the raw edges off. This particular piece required some hand stitching because I pieced 4 flip and sew blocks together to create the center of the piece. (The pattern came from a class that I took at a lqs, sorry no link!.) I love the weight of the table topper without batting, and the flip and sew technique is perfect for something that is washed often because the layers don't shift around.

I'm really glad that I can use a few of my older pieces again! As I was packing up for us to move to Seattle, I realized that I have lots of quilty things that aren't being used all of the time. Lots of them are seasonal or are very specific colors/styles and I wasn't sure that I wanted to store so much. I think I may still donate a few very gently used quilts, but I'm also going to hold onto some of the things that I'm not sure about parting with, because I may find uses for them in the future!

*I love the flip and sew technique so much that I just finished up a table cloth this way! I'll show that one as soon as we have a sunny day so I can take a few pictures.*

1 comment:

Keep Stitchin' said...

Very pretty! You have a beautiful view, too!