Re-use

That old quilt was definitely a history of reuse. I had come back from a summer of camp in Maine and knew for the next summer I wanted an extra quilt, the kind that wouldn't be hurt by camp cots and pine pitch on the back of the shorts. I had the bag of old shirts and dresses I knew could be used for something, if no longer for wearing. And then a housemate who had finished her craft project stint with a vacation bible school session gave me a bunch of vaguely square muslin pieces.

Log cabin was clearly the order of the day.


I don't know if I ever took a picture of the quilt when it was in better shape. You can see where the red flannel plaid strips are just frayed bits along the seam lines. That was the first flannel shirt I made for myself. Wore it through the elbows. Still, you know, there was decent fabric in the shirt tails - isn't that the usual reference made by the quiltmakers of years gone by?

The lighter toned red plaid was a plisse dress I wore in the 80's. It just got to be too thin to be decent, but there was enough poly in the blend, so the fabric still doesn't seem to have given up the ghost.

And just off center in most of the squares, on the lighter halves, is an old plisse fabric, white with little starbursts of red, yellow, and blue. That was one of my dad's shirts. I wore it out. My mother thought that shirt reflected an appalling lack of judgement and taste. It was a designer shirt. Pierre Cardin, no less. Strictly 70's. And it was not much more than pajama weight plisse. Oh, she thought that was an appalling expenditure, and tacky.

Most of the other pieces are scraps from sewing projects. Most of them were mine, but I may have co-opted some of my sister's scraps.

More to come on the extended thrift-life of this quilt.

You know I'm talking myself up to doing some more practical quilts, of course.