2016 My Year in Garbage

Well, I finally got the whole trash quilt put together.  What started out as an exercise became a comment on 2016.  My husband's hip replacement, my Mom's death, the awful election process all ended up on the quilt.  It was displayed at the Rio Grande Valley Quilt Guild Quilt Show on South Padre Island, TX and at the Fiber Arts Unlimited exhibit at the Upper Valley Art League (UVAL) in Mission Texas.  It was also a topic of discussion at the UVAL pot luck dinner.  All in all it was well received.  Not everyone "got it" but I did have the chance to do some explaining at each of these venues. The grey square on the bottom has an "I Voted" sticker in the center and free motion quilting on the grey around it symbolizing the grey morass in which this election got stuck .  In the bottom right square are "vintage pop tops" that my sister and I found while cleaning my mom's garage.  They did not belong to my brothers so we figured they belonged to my dad, he has been gone for 25 years so they are definitely vintage.   They were crocheted with bits of left over crochet thread. It symbolizes the mountain of garbage that is our garbage disposal site in Texas plus it makes a nice jingling sound for the last month of the year.




Front View of Trash Quilt



The back is almost as colorful as the front,  I used a lot of old bubble wrap (18 years old) as both batting and backing.  the squares list what was used for each square as sometimes it is not obvious. My thanks to all who graciously contributed their curated trash.  I wanted this to be a thought provoking idea, getting people to think about the amount of stuff we throw away.  It is in the spirit of Cfarftivism, using crafts in an activist way.  If you would like to learn more about this growing movement pleas hop on over to the The Craftivist Collective.

Back view