100 Cups of Coffee Collage on the Wall

Coffee is one of my favorite quilting subjects, (cuff bracelet, wallhanging), but I've been using the same old coffee fabrics for years. Then, a few months ago, I had a chance to visit the renowned Britex Fabrics in San Francisco, where I scored this delicious scrap of red-black-and-khaki fabric, with pseudo-polka dots.

I don't say 'no' to polka dots, even if they're square. (Representing sugar cubes?) Closer to home, at my LQS, I bought a bit of this: 

The idea of this fabric is so much better than the reality -  it repeats the same designs and coffee shop names in a very small space, so once you get up close, it gets boring quickly (note that 'City Coffee Shop' is on top of another 'City Coffee Shop.' We'll soon fix that, mwah hah hah!)

I also had the good fortune this fall to take a class with Eleanor Levie at the Pomegranate Guild convention, in which we recycled coffee and other foil beverage bags into wallhangings. The experience reinforced my love for coffee detritus. 

Thus, this wallhanging. It starts with the words, '100 cups on the wall' The '100' and 'cups' are cut from foil coffee bags. 'On the wall' is burlap, with paper-backed fusible web ironed on back before cutting. I stitched them with invisible thread, scribbling all over each burlap letter, to hold it securely. The foil bags I only zig-zag stitched around the edges, to minimize risk of the plastic ripping through.

When a novelty fabric doesn't give you what you want,  jack it up (as they say on television). This I did by sticking a few colorful mugs among them, and then patching tiny black-and-white motifs from other fabrics over the labels. From top left, I added a butterfly, berry plant, music symbols, a hand signing the letter "c", a sun, nintendo-like entities, a strong man, an egg, a warrior, dice, and a cat.

The strong man is my favorite (from the Lunn's Red Ant Studios, now out of print). I am thinking of spilling dots of actual coffee among the cups. What do I have to lose? (Seriously! I'm asking! What?) 

On the lower left, an alarm clock (cut from old pajamas) conveys the impact, and often the timing, of caffeine. 

 The hand is from a fabric depicting Mexican fortune telling cards.

And finally....ever since that Eleanor Levie class I've been tying recyclables to the bottoms of my quilts. I thought about this: 

But then I wound up with the arrangement in the first picture above. For the right side, I created a long chain of creamer cups, with a plastic coffee cup at the bottom. 

And for the left side, I added radiating energy lines made up of stiffened rickrack. 

Too much coffee can be too much fun!