Reuseful

I did quite a bit of hand stitching on the koi quilt, but I still need to practice my embroidery and work out some designs before I tackle the linen quilt I want to make next. So I decided to make a practice piece out of this old, lumpy cutter quilt piece.

Most of the hand quilting on this piece looked like basting, so I snipped through it and separated the plain front from the print backing, and found the cotton batting had migrated into a big ball and lots of bunches, rendering it unusable.

This is the little heap of old batting I removed from the piece.

I hand washed the remaining fabric after taking the pieces apart (picture here darkened to show the print pattern on the backing.) After it dried it looked much better, and the old cotton is fabulously soft (and very much like the linen I'll be working with on the next quilt), thus perfect for stitch practice.

For me practice pieces don't have to be perfect or functional; I just need a foundation to work on. That's why I recycle old cutters I can't make into anything else for this kind of fun.