I wanted to make something extra special for my brother Dan for Christmas, kind of a combo Christmas and "welcome home from a two year mission in Brazil" kind of present. A quilt seemed the perfect thing to create a warm reminder of his sister to wrap up in on chilly evenings and to help him remember how great I think he is. To further the remembering, I decided to make it out of old clothes; my favorite pants from high school, a shirt bought at our favorite hippie store in Maine, the first pair of "expensive jeans" I bought in San Francisco, all with a story and a memory attached.
The preparation was really more work than the actually piecing together and sewing of the quilt. All those pants were quartered and then cut into rectangles, which was quite the process!
Because I'm always looking for the quick way to a satisfying crafty finish I decided to sew all the rectangle strips together in one, large, quilt-sized block and then cut them up in horizontal strips to then rearrange.
After arranging and rearranging (and rescuing the strips from little feet and plastic dinosaur attacks) I settled on the color sequence and sewed those strips together. Each strip that went in was so satisfying as the pieces began to look more and more like a quilt. Once they were all together I was almost tempted to leave it that way, sort of a modern, large block Gee's Bend thing. But I decided the end result would be nicer with small blocks and so I chopped up my newly formed quilt into small strips.
I got so wrapped up in the process I forgot to document the sewing together of the little strips. And then Dan arrived for the holidays and I got so wrapped up in hanging out with him and doing other holiday preparations that the finished quilt top languished, backless and unstuffed until the day we were to leave for the cabin!
Luckily there is an old sewing machine up at the cabin, probably one of the first electric models. It was actually quite a pleasure to work on that old machine; it was so solid and zipped right through the heaviest fabric. Initially though it didn't work, but Clay worked some magic and got it humming again, only to discover there was no needle! Luckily a trip into town and a small Christmas miracle produced three needles. When Clay and his dad went into West Yellowstone for supplies, they asked if the grocery store carried sewing needles. The answer was no, and neither did the other store... BUT, said the clerk, there's an old lady who lives over that way who buys sewing supplies in Bozeman and she might sell you a few. Well, that sweet lady refused to take any money, but gave Clay three sewing needles to help me finish my last-minute Christmas project. This was Christmas Eve. She did swap a few stories with Clay and accept a Christmas hug though, and Clay decided that was better than money anyway.
In between organizing a Christmas Eve tamale-making assembly line, playing board games and eating Christmas treats I was able to sneak downstairs and finish up the present just in time. Dan had been eagerly eyeing the lumpy, striped bag and was, I think, thrilled with the present when he finally got to open it. I told him where all the pieces of fabric came from and he immediately wrapped up in it and has been sleeping under it every night since. I'm glad he'll have a little piece of "home" with him when he heads up to college.
