She who dies with the most fabric........WINS!!

It is time for me to make a confession...............................I horde material. There, I've said it. It's out in the open and I can finally breathe. I don't care how old it is, how small the piece...........if it's fabric...........it's mine! I have hand me down material, new material, old material and very, very old material. It is my weakness. Luckily, with my latest project I am going to use up a good amount of my stock pile. I have decided that after years and years..............it is time to make another quilt. This quilt is different from any of the other quilts I've made in years past. This quilt is called a rag quilt. Each square is quilted individually before piecing the entire quilt together. And the seams are wrong side out on purpose leaving strips of soft, frayed fabric. I am basing my quilt on this particular picture of a rag quilt that I found online.

Rag quilts are exactly what they imply..............made of scraps of fabric that don't seem to belong anymore or are too small. The prettiest ones I've seen contain a variety of fabrics with no particular order or design. In many ways, my life is like a quilt. Like everyone else, I've had my share of "ugly" moments in my life. But, the beautiful ones always outweigh the bad. But I could never wish away these painful parts of my life because what if that changed what I have now? The quilt that I'm making now is alot like that. There are pieces of my quilt that are beyond ugly. But, for some reason, I can still see the beauty in them. And as much as it pains me to include them, I just can't make myself omit them. 

This material was given to me by my grandmother, Mo. I love this particular material for a number of reasons. First of all the material is actually dated and stamped 1968 right on the fabric and second of all...........I'm pretty sure it's never been unfolded since Mo put it away years and years ago. It reminds me of when I was little and lived in the East Palatka house. I'm not sure why, but it does. And for some unknown reason..............I love it! And because misery loves company I also had to include the other ugly one too. They seem to fit together somehow.

pieces from Kirk's BDU's will also be included.................

here's material from the curtains I made for Ryley's room when he was a baby............

here's a piece from Bailey's very first halloween costume. I dressed her up as a witch and made her a dress.

I made throw pillows for the kids out of this material..................

My step-mom made a beautiful Easter dress out of this material for Bailey when she was only a few months old. I bought her hot pink jelly sandals to go with the outfit.............

this is all of the material that I am using to make the quilt. There are 312 7inch pieces and 50 13inch pieces total. As you can probably tell from some of the previous pictures I have already started quilting the individual pieces. I'm only about a quarter of the way finished with this step. Luckily I have chosen a simple X pattern for quilting and because of that can do it with the machine instead of by hand.

This is the quilt that I made for Kirk while he was away at Basic Training in 1997. I used old jeans, red bandana and various patriotic materials for this quilt that depict where our life was at the time. Bandanas always remind me of him.....................when I met Kirk he was a farmer. And he'd wear a bandana around his head when he worked out in the fields. Doesn't sound like anything special, but I remember the first time I saw him working on the farm and thinking I'd never seen anyone look as sexy as him in a worn out pair of jeans and a bandana tied around his head. So, that is why I included that. Kirk will forever be a blue jean man and because of that................I included jeans. My quilts are full of memories. So many things are tied into my quilts. I choose the material so carefully. Each piece needs to mean something to me...........or to my family. Kirk always says that he wants to be buried with the quilt I made for him. I love teasing him that I'm going to have to throw it away one of these days. It's been repaired and washed thousands of times and is still the prized possession of whoever gets to it first on movie night. It's age only adds to it's appeal. How many times have one of us ran our hands over the embroidered parts of the quilt???? I want this new quilt to hold the same kind of memories for us that the old one does. So, I included material that to the unknowing eye might not seem to fit. But, to us...................couldn't be more perfect.