Making A Quilt for Mara's Birthday - And Zero Waste Wrapping for Her Gifts

   We have had some milestone birthdays around here lately. Mara turned 18 on Friday and Ken turned 40 on Sunday. It was a busy birthday time. When figuring out birthday gifts I thought it would be fun to make Mara a quilt. I made one for her room years ago (before I started blogging) but we have been wanting to make a different one for several years now. This year I decided that she and I probably weren't going to get around to making one together as she is busy with college and work and then plans to head off to a mission program next year but that it still would be nice for her to have a new quilt that she could take with her when she went. 

  So Megan agreed to work with me on her quilt and the Monday before her birthday (we are notorious for last minute plans and procrastinating around here) we started to design and work on her quilt. Her room is blue and she had made a rag rug for it in greens, purples and blues so we decided to use those colors for the quilt. Megan went through the fabric scraps that we had on hand and choose some that she wanted to use. I made patterns and we started cutting pieces out.

 Megan did most of the cutting and I did most of the sewing but we did both do the other some as well. Megan put in many hours of work and I would never have been able to get it done without her.

For the middle of the quilt (that will not be seen) we used an old blanket from my college days that had seen it's better days. It was bigger than we needed so from the extra that we cut off Megan patched the middle where there were holes.

 For the backing of the quilt we used an old sheet of ours that had gotten ripped (and a little worn) at the top of it but still seemed to be quite sturdy fabric for the rest of it. I was able to cut the ripped and worn section completely off and use the part that was left.

   We were hiding out in my bedroom to pin the quilt together, to tie it and pin binding on.

Mara was quite happy with her quilt.

I am thankful that it fits well on her double bed now but should also work on a single bed in the future.

  For the quilt we were able only use things that we already had on hand.  We were able to make something "new" and useful out of what many people would have considered trash. The tiny little cotton scraps that were created from making the quilt we were able to put in our compost to rot. Large scraps will be used for other projects and the rest of the sheet will go into a rag rug and new handkerchiefs. "Waste not, want not" :-)

  We were also able to employ Zero Waste wrapping for the birthdays lately. For large gifts (like the quilt) a table cloth makes a nice piece of "wrapping paper". I secured it with a rubber band instead of tape. Smaller pieces of fabric or a kerchief works nicely for smaller gifts. Reusable gift bags were also used for Mara's birthday and they work great.

  This is part of my series "31 Days of attempting to create Zero Waste" - for a list of others in the series go here.