Category: Repair Repurpose Recycle Reuse

Woohoo! Another old project finished! This is a lap quilt I started in 1992 – my first attempt at a quilt.  I cut each hex out by hand with scissors because I didn’t know about rotary cutters at the time.  All the fabric I used was either scraps from other sewing projects, old shirts I used to wear, an old worn bandana, etcetera, that I’d collected by that time.  I began hand stitching those little hexes together and was so proud of myself with how it was coming together!

Then one day, while sitting outside my apartment of the time hand sewing hexes while enjoying some lovely spring weather, a random neighbor stopped and looked at what I was doing and then said to me hey, you’re doing it wrong, you’re supposed to cut out little triangles to put around each hex “flower”.  I’m going to admit I was a borderline devastated … it was the first time I’d try quilting and I didn’t know that there was anything to quilting other than cut fabric, sew it together to make a top, then sew the top to batting and some sort of fabric for the back.  She then pointed out how I cut the hexes “wrong” (huh???), and I started pushing back saying things like “thank you for your suggestions, I’ll take them into consideration but right now, I’m not undoing all I did!”  Having said that, she got the hint and walked off back to her own apartment.  My bravado was a front; in my heart, I was pretty upset.  I had been so proud of what I had done so far and really loved how it was coming together.

I especially loved handling the hexes made out the assorted cows and chickens fabrics which were scrap fabric given to me by a since-deceased friend and the plaid fabric from a shirt I wore every time my dad showed me how to work on my car when I was a teenager.  Dad believed that you can’t learn to drive until you know things like how to change out a flat tire, how to check your fluids, change your oil, and do simple repairs.  To this day, the time getting greasy with my dad while helping him on simple car maintenance tasks are my favorite teenage years memories!

I set the quilt aside again and forgot until quite a few years and many moves later (around 2007ish) when I came across a large remnant of fuzzy minky-like pink fabric at a yard sale, a fleecy type fabric that’s smooth on one side and has a fuzzy short cut fleecy nap on the other side.  Although I don’t know if it was a large fabric scrap or part of an old blanket or something else, I loved the fabric and immediately thought hey, this would be a great back to my long-neglected little hexes lap quilt!  I handed over 25 cents and suddenly motivated to finally finish the long packed away project, I headed back to my home (in Colorado by that time).

I started working on the quilt topper again, cutting and adding hexes from more fabric and old clothing collected since then.  I cut up an old curtain and made the bright green border (it’s a bit more vibrant than it looks in the photo) and got to the point where it was finally time to put it together with the batting (from a partially used roll of batting I found at a Goodwill thrift store).   I brought the now finished top and my wad of fuzzy pink most likely polyester fabric with me to a local craft circle meeting to show it off and tell its story; plus, I wanted to get some advice on how best to machine sew the top, batting and backing together on my first ever sewing machine, a cheap and simple Brother sewing machine that I’d bought at Walmart.  By this time, I had hand-quilted three incomplete quilts I’d found at thrift stores in the intervening years, but I really didn’t have any idea how to approach machine quilting it.

Surprisingly, everyone oooh’d and aaah’d at my topper and admired my hand stitching of all those hexes together and nobody, not one single person, said a word about my lack of triangles joining the hexes together.  Then I pulled the pink minky-like fabric out of my bag and you’d have thought I’d committed a crime.  NO!!  You can’t use that for the backing!  Fuzzy polyester, that’s just wrong for a quilt!  Sigh … I didn’t want to make a quilt “wrong” but at the same time, I really liked this fabric, I loved the color of it, I loved how my topper looked with it, and come on, it can’t really be that bad to mix fabrics in a quilt, can it be?  The topper already is made of mixed fabrics as were some of those other quilts I’d completed over the years!

Alas, I returned home a bit dejected and figured I’d think about what they said later.  I put the quilt aside again, and completely forgot about it again, until last year (2018) when I started my “finish a project before you start a new one” resolution (aka the “Unfinished Projects Project”), so when I bought a new sewing machine late last year, I knew I needed to dig out my far too long neglected first ever quilt and finally finish it.  Who cares if it’s quilted “right” or “wrong”!  It’s become an old friend far too long neglected; continuing to neglect it disrespects the stories it now holds.

Don’t get me wrong … there’s nothing wrong with wanting to quilt all “proper”, using only the highest quality cotton fabrics, cotton batting, cotton backing, everything color-coordinated using fancy designer fabrics and every stitch exactly perfect in its placement and all that jazz … it’s just not me; it’s not how I quilt.  My philosophy and approach to any crafting – especially quilting – is make what you want using what you like in the way you want to do it.  Techniques are tools we use to achieve what we want to craft, not the purpose of crafting.  If I want a perfectly proper color coordinated fancy designer fabric computerized long-arm quilted quilt, I’ll go buy one at a store or bid on a locally made one at our annual county fair.  Sure, those who quilt like that do create beautiful quilts – often stunningly beautiful – but to me, there’s no story, no soul, no history to those quilts.  Buy the pattern, buy the same fabric, select the same quilting file for the long-arm machine and you can duplicate that quilt a hundred times.

Call me old fashioned or even silly but to me, the most beautiful quilts are those created with scraps of random fabric, especially the fabric of clothes once worn and loved.  I have a huge soft spot for quilts that are made with not much of a plan beyond “hey, I like how this looks together”, especially when they have a story behind them (such as family tree quilts or memorial quilts).

Of course, by now, I’ve figured out various ways to quilt on my old, now retired home sewing machine and I’ve made several quilts out of random bits of fabric of random types in all of them without any issue at all.  My thoughts about what is “proper” quilting and belief that I’m supposed to only quilt “the right way” have long been thrown out the window … not that it was ever a hard-core belief!

And here it is … my little lap quilt, the first quilt I ever attempted to make starting back in 1992, now all completed!  It’s not “done the right way” by those who think they know “better” than me how *I* should quilt my own quilts, but I freakin’ love it!  

And here’s the back – the fuzzy pink feels fabulous!  My crazy wavy quilting stitch makes the back look like it’s a jigsaw puzzle.  It’s makes this quilt even more fun than it is, and I believe it’s the perfect closing chapter to the story of this quilt.

And what a story this quilt already has!  Along with the stories behind some of the scraps of fabric, I’ve worked on this quilt in five different states – Virginia, Washington, DC; various cities in Colorado, Nevada and Oregon.  It’s tagged along tucked in a box under the bed of my old Winnebago RV when I traveled and lived in that for four years, “seeing” the back woods, lakes, mountains and towns of Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Idaho and Oregon before I ended up “settling down” where I now live in Oregon and where it was finally completed and now spends this cold winter cozying up with me at my desk.

I look at the errant stitches here and there and am reminded of where I was when I sewed that hex.  I run my fingers over the rainbow-bright edge triangles made of the bandana that my old beloved dog, Cleveland, gone now 18 years, use to wear and remember the countless hours spent petting him while he curled up next to me those 14 years I was blessed to have him in my life.  I smile every time I look at the bright sunny green edging thinking of those ridiculous frilly ruffled curtains my mom gave me when I bought my first house back in 1999 – curtains I hung over the windows of a room that didn’t face the street, lol!  Those curtains really were ridiculous but I did always love the color of them, mom got that right!

Heh … I guess this little quilt’s story is still being written, after all!