Pieces of history

Hmmm, can I write a post AND cook dinner at the same time? Note that the kitchen is downstairs and the computer, upstairs. Well, I'm game to try.

The rush is on because I've just learned that I need to take Dean to soccer practice tonight; Ken can't manage it.

Well. Anyway. This fragment comes from a bag of mixed fragment bits that I bought at a craft fair a number of years ago. The enterprising crafter who bought old quilts to cut them up and make other things out of them (teddy bears, pillows, covered footstools, etc.) took all the scrap pieces she cut and bagged them up to sell -- getting quite the most mileage from her materials purchases. You know what they call these quilts, right? I hate to even use the term -- "cutters." Can you imagine? Can you imagine having made something by hand, only to have it end up designated worthy only of being cut up to make something else? I know there are two sides to this debate -- the people who say that a torn, dirty, damaged, or otherwise unusable quilt [dinner intermission here] gets a new lease on life when cut up to make something else, and those who feel no quilt should ever be cut up for something else but instead repaired or else simply enjoyed with all of its history intact. I couldn't bring myself to buy something made out of an old quilt, but I've enjoyed taking these odd scraps and have tried to make them back into tiny quilts. I'll put a binding around this piece and use it on a table top (tip if you're ever up to something similar -- take one of the 30's repro fabrics and use the back side of it; that gives you the same faded look that the genuinely old fabrics have). I wouldn't do it again -- buy another bag of these kinds of scraps -- but I don't regret rescuing this little collection. May none of your projects ever, ever be deemed a cutter (unless, of course, by you).