Scraps of the Scraps Quilt

I love the moral of the scrap quilt. The idea that no matter how ugly some of the tiny pieces hidden in there, the overall effect is one of beauty. I've needed that reminder lately. In fact, I think I've needed it so much that I really gave this quilt everything I had, in terms of ugly fabric, leftovers, leftovers of the leftovers. I've needed it so much that a few weeks ago, all that ugly fabric sewn and cut and sewn and trimmed down, down, down into teeny, tiny hourglass blocks, that I burst into tears in fear that it might not be true. Maybe I won't like it. And maybe that will say something about us.

Colourful squares that were made into a custom drawstring quilt nearly two Christmases ago, gave leftovers that became a table runner for my mum last Christmas, which gave hundreds of discarded leftover, half-sewn hourglasses. They didn't begin to be enough for this chequerboard quilt. I emptied and sorted and sewed my large, overstuffed, glass jar of scrappy triangles. (EMPTIED! I have used ALL those triangles-from-binding scraps!) And still they weren't enough. And then I took the plunge. That risky, exciting yet terrifying, plunge into my charm square box for all those pieces I'd bought before I knew beautiful fabric (sorry, my taste in fabric) existed. I sewed them together, cut them, sewed them, trimmed them into terribly sad little hourglassess. And then I cried.

And then (evidently), I kept going, sewing these tiny squares together into bigger, and bigger squares, until finally, I knew that everything was right with the world. I backed it in flannel and quilted it on each side of every second diagonal seam. Then I bound it in aqua, which, compared to any other print I auditioned, seemed to make all those tiny hourglasses shine! Maybe the prints that seemed misfits at first, become beautiful when matched with the right environment. Maybe there's a moral in that also?