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.

Comments

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.

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

T-minus Day

This was our little Thanksgiving dinner last year, when it was just the three of us. Time keeps whittling down my favorite holiday; this year it will be just me and my guy, and we likely won't even have a turkey.* That will be a first in 35 years. I feel about Thanksgiving the way other people do about Christmas, and while it's a lot of work it's my favorite holiday. Of all the Thanksgivings I've had in the past sixty years, only three were truly terrible: one when I was a kid that I don't talk about (#1 most miserable); the time I roasted two turkeys together and hosted fifteen people whom I cooked for and served with zero help (the largest and #2 most miserable); and the one I spent in basic training (the #3 most miserable.) I have no pictures of any of those, thank heavens. In addition to doing all the cooking I'm the one who takes all the pictures, washes all the dishes and puts away all the leftovers. I suppose no one else cares because to them it...

Valerean

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