Up For a Challenge
In the heat and humidity of summer days, I always have a backup plan, and that would be my basement sewing room. The dehumidifier keeps the air drier than in days of old when the basement floors would actually sweat. I don’t spend hour upon hour at sewing, as the back needs a break every hour on the hour. That gives me a chance to check out what Dennis is up to in the porch or to take a stroll into the gardens to see if the mosquitoes have been intimidated by the heat and humidity.
This summer I have issued myself a challenge that involves my sewing: no new fabric is to be cut into for a quilt top, until I have my leftover scraps used up. Let’s see . . . I have been making blankets and quilts since Carrie and Kevin have been small, and I don’t believe in throwing too much of anything away. I think I could have safely estimated the amount of leftover scraps by the pound. The first thing in the challenge was to sort through according to size more so than color. A scrappy quilt knows no specific color pallet. I decided to do the least desirable stash of leftovers first. I ended up with a huge brown paper bag of fabric scraps ranging in 1″ wide to 2.5″ wide. The Internet was a valuable tool to find the patterns that would serve me and my stash.
The pattern I chose was called a string quilt and that was all the motivation I needed. Years past I had made Dennis’ 
granddaughter Sadie a quilt using her t-shirts from three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. That allowed me quite a bit of black scraps to pull this all together. As I have said . . . I don’t throw much of anything away.
This afternoon a break was needed when I had the total of 56 nine inch blocks sewn together. What remains is a decision on what type of border I will add with an additional group of leftovers. Sewing of this type of pattern takes a lot of thread. Lucky me, I had a shoe box full of an assortment of colors of thread that I had purchased in an antique shop in Nebraska several years ago. This shop bought out estates, and though the thread didn’t qualify as antiques, anybody who happened to walk into the front door of their shop and had money to spend was bound to find something to pique their interests.
It was enjoyable pulling one scrap at a time out of the brown paper bag next to the sewing machine. I could relate when each of the patterned fabric had been used in times past.
I am by no means close to having a finished product. The quilt top will be of a queen size and as of now it is 70″ x 80″ and the border will bring it up to snuff. My intent is that Dennis will have this quilt when the cold winter of 2015 hits. Dennis equates bulk and weight with warmth and that will take batting that does not work up well with long arm sewing machines. In making a decision for the back of this scrappy quilt, I am thinking of purchasing flannel. Real 100% cotton flannel shrinks more than one would think. By the time it is washed and dried, it will work perfectly. The extra wide fabric marketed for the back of quilts is 108 inches wide and eliminates seaming the 44″ wide that is the usual on the bolts of fabric. In time to come, I will be sitting in the basement with the quilt spread over the top of my two church tables making a lot of knots with embroidery floss. It’s not about the time a project takes, it’s about the challenge. The remaining stash of leftovers has been tucked away until the time is right. I don’t want to be led astray with my mind being caught up in what might be regarding a project yet to be.