Ever since Executive Editor June Dudley mentioned Jan Morin in her last edit letter, readers have been asking us for more information. Seems like a perfect topic for a blog post. Jan lives in Pine Grove, California and has found a way to be green with her quilting scraps and contribute to a worthwhile cause at the same time.

Jan makes pet pillows and donates them to her local SPCA. Here’s how:

Using stash fabric, cut two squares or rectangles of the same size. They can be any size that is roughly appropriate for a pet to lounge on. Place the pieces right sides together and sew around the edges, leaving an opening on one side for turning. Turn the pillow right sides out.

Use your fabric scraps and thread clippings to stuff the pillow.

Jan says the scraps don’t have to be extremely small, just not extremely large. After stuffing, sew the opening closed.

Jan says the pillows are used for dogs and cats, who love them! The SPCA loves them, too, and even gives them to new pet owners for their newly adopted pets.

To find an animal shelter in your area, visit aspca.org. If you’ve read this far, please leave a comment about something you’ve sewn for a good cause and we’ll have a giveaway! The winner is Prairie Quilter, comment #18 and she has been notified. Congratulations!

This beautiful bundle holds nine fat quarters of brand new Benartex fabrics in a line called Playful Pups. It’s so new, stores don’t have it yet. We’ll draw for a winner on Friday, Oct. 30 about noon MST.

Another view of the fabrics included:

How cute are these?! Our thanks to Jan for sharing her good cause with QM readers.

When we had our Fabricadabra workshop a while back, I tried marbling fabric with shaving cream. I had gotten a kit with all the supplies from Quilters Treasure.

It was a fun process, even if it was somewhat messy. I guess if you don’t want a mess, you shouldn’t be trying to create your own fabric! The first step is to spread shaving cream evenly over the work surface. I didn’t stress about getting it perfect.

The Tsukineko inks are applied next. They come in lots of colors. You can use one color or more. I dropped ink (pink, blue and yellow) onto the shaving cream with a toothpick.

Now you get to make the designs which will eventually end up on the fabric and look pretty and swirly. You can drag a comb through the shaving cream/paint, or you can use your fingers, a toothpick or whatever you have on hand.

Here’s another version using different ink colors:

It’s getting interesting. Take the fabric you want to marble and lay it carefully right side down on top of the shaving cream/paint–kind of pressing the fabric into the shaving cream. Pick up the fabric, lay it flat with the painted side up and use a squeegee to remove the shaving cream.

The fabric I used was plain white cotton. I wasn’t crazy about the way the white showed, so I decided to add some paint.

This might not have been the best idea, but I figured I didn’t really have anything to lose. Later I decided to use Jacquard paints and paint the whole thing pink, which got rid of the white background I was disliking so much.

Here is my finished fabric. The nice thing is that if you don’t like what’s happening, you can paint over it! The kit from Quilters Treasure was helpful—it saved me from running all over town to gather supplies.

I decided to cut up the fabric and do a couple of mock-ups, just to see how it would behave in a block.

Here it is with a deep blue Tonga batik from Timeless Treasures:

And another with Nana’s Garden from Red Rooster Fabrics:

And finally with luscious Ricky Tims’s Rhapsody Colorée III, also from Red Rooster:

I’ll be doing more marbling. It’s easy and fun!

We had a brainstorming meeting a while ago at work, and I started thinking about the concept of brainstorming and how I might apply it to ideas for artwork or quilts or quilted artwork. June guided the meeting and told us up front that no idea was off-limits; we should try not to respond positively or negatively to any idea; we should use ideas and comments to “jump off” into new ideas. In 30 minutes, we came up with more than 300 ideas. It was inspiring!

So I need to begin something new and creative in my work/sewing space at home, and I decided to brainstorm to get myself going. I’ve decided on a theme of “daughter.”

My daughter Holly and me

Here is the beginning of my brainstorm list:

DAUGHTER

sweet, precious, Holly, Elizabeth, fun, memories, May, writer, social concern, gift, love, Seattle, rainboots, funky, creative, cell phone, texting, Side-by-Side job, blogger, Holly Wood, loves Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner. My own mom, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, late-in-life-baby, helpmate, going for repairs, delivering livestock, lunch to the field, Venus as birthplace, saddle shoes, Fostoria American.

The list probably doesn’t mean much to you, but it has all kinds of emotions and associations for me, and I can see where it will be good fodder for a quilt design or a piece of artwork. Try it yourself–choose a theme and get started! We would welcome your musings as comments here on Quilty Pleasures. Let the brainstorming begin!