Le Wannabut Quilt

The quilt I got for $7.99 during the last round of Wannabuts arrived; let's see if it's as pretty as the pics.

It's a really big quilt -- a couple inches short of a queen size, from the look of it. I think the patchwork is really charming.

I'd say this was made back in the seventies or eighties. It's actually quite well made, likely out of polyester clothing scraps (which is also why the colors are still nice and bright. Polyester generally doesn't fade.) There is no batting, and the backing was probably a sheet the maker repurposed.

I'm not a fan of polyester fabric, but I repaired a quilt very similar to this one many times over the years for my mother. A friend of hers who was wheelchair bound hand-sewed the entire quilt, making it from scraps of her own old clothes. Mom loved it and always asked me to fix it whenever the hand stitching came loose and the seams split open.

At first repairing that old quilt was a hassle, but after I realized how much the quilt meant to her I did my best to keep it in usable condition. Gradually I got to the point that I looked forward to repairing it a couple times every year. Finally I repaired it enough that it stopped needing repairs.

My siblings probably threw out the old quilt after my mother died, as it wasn't something they could sell, but that's fine. I never wanted that one. It would make me sad to see it again. This one brings back the happy memories of all the repairing I did without any negative associations. So I'll repair this one and recapture those memories.

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T-minus Day

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Holiday Prep

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Fell Off the Wagon

I did cut up that plastic dollar tote to make into something stronger, but got caught up with work and set it aside. Then last night some hand-dyed silk and pretty threads called my name, and, well . . . Felt SO good to do some handwork, except my neck began hurting about an hour into it. I tried changing the way I sit and work, but it's pretty obvious that the doc is right.

Valerean

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