Flour Bin Quilt Block Display

I love to display my great-grandmother, Maude's, quilting handiwork. Yet, I can't find the hours to sew by hand like she did. Upon finding some of her quilt blocks, not yet sewn into a quilt, I found an alternative way to display them.

I purchased various sizes of styrofoam balls for this project. I used straight pins from my sewing supplies, and did not use any type of adhesive. I simply wrapped each quilt block around a styrofoam ball, folded and tucked as needed, then pinned. I tucked quite a bit more to make the quilted fabric fit around the smallest balls.

I chose to display the balls inside the flour bin section of an old Hoosier cabinet. The front covering was long since gone from the door of the flour bin, and I had replaced that with decorative seedy glass. I carefully placed the balls inside, alternating the various sizes. I intended for the view from the front to be random, as if these were balls of candy or some other such food item.

This has been a satisfying way to display Great-Grandma Maude's quilting handiwork. As you can see from the photos, she had definitely sewn each stitch by hand, probably right around the turn of the century. Each block is preserved, in case I want to piece them together myself at a later time.

My one regret about this project is that I did not find a more environmentally friendly core for the quilt blocks. I wonder if I could have wrapped pieces of cotton into balls, or at least used polyester batting to create balls. I'll let you know if I experiment with this at a later time.

Some alternative places to display the quilt balls could be a pretty bowl or in a shadow box. If I displayed these in a bowl, I would want the bowl to be inside a cabinet for dust control.