Leftovers again

You know I love leftovers, whether my own or somebody else's.  In fact, I probably love somebody else's more than I love my own, because I feel some mystical kinship with the woman who worked on this stuff in the past, even if I don't know who she was.  Whenever I have visited the Crow Barn I have brought home other people's leftovers as well as my own, and when I was there last month I was fortunate to score three big grocery bags full of fabric from other people's discards.

As usual, when I acquire a bunch of leftovers I can hardly restrain myself from digging in, sorting them out and sewing them together into some new configuration.  So when I needed to make a little quilt for the auction at Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth Art Center this past weekend, I dumped out all the bags and found enough different colors to make a little postage stamp quilt.

Alphabet Soup

































My thanks to everybody at the Barn who donated leftovers.  If your fabric didn't get used up in the postage stamp quilt, rest assured it will be used soon in some other project.  I will get a huge energy boost from working with your bits and pieces; your karma will become part of mine.

The writing on the wall

News flash from Hobby Lobby: apparently it's trendy to put letters on your wall.

I found all kinds ready to hang, some classically beautiful:

some pretty good-looking, if you like faux antique:

and some not so good-looking:

And many more ready for you to paint, decoupage, wrap or whatever.  I counted at least nine different kinds and sizes, made of wood or cardboard, which I won't bore you with.  Here's the best of the bunch, typographically speaking:

I suppose that most people who buy these letters will buy enough to spell out their names, even though that's typographically questionable. All-cap words are often hard to read, especially with godawful typefaces such as the pink and blue glitter jobs above. What, you didn't notice the glitter in the photo?  Sorry, bad photography.

In my household there are lots and lots and lots of letters on display, but sitting by themselves rather than spelling things.  And all of them led a functional life before they retired to become decor.  Some are printer's type:

Others are stencils:

And some aren't technically letters at all.  This is a piece of rusty metal that my friend Debby found on the railroad tracks and gave to me because it sure looks like a B and she knows I will give a letter a better home than just about anybody.

You know I'm a snob about letters, so it won't surprise you that I like my "real" letters better than the made-in-China models.  Either way, there are a lot worse things you could put on your walls than the alphabet.

Just try not to put this on your sofa: