Remembering: Piece By Piece

My February TIF is slowly coming together piece by piece. I swapped out a few of the fabrics as I was cutting each quadrant because some of the fabrics were not color saturated enough for this project.

I am definately short on yellow fabrics in my stash so one of the fabrics is my own hand dyed cotton. I was trying to steer clear of my hand dyes figuring that would be just too easy to create a quasi color-wheel, but I caved under pressure.

Now that the basic design has been cut, I am anxious to cut the background pieces. The fabric that I have loosely pinned to my design wall around the blocks is a Hoffman salt dispersed hand dyed piece that I am hoping to use. Once I cut a few pieces and put them with the pieces already cut for the basic design, I’ll see if this fabric will work.  The fabric may prove to be too dark or too busy, so I’ll cut a few pieces first.

As I admire this Hoffman fabric, I remember how I acquired it: I bought a bolt of this and one in earth-tones to sell to customers back when I had my business. I took 2 yards off of each bolt for my own stash before I shelved it for customers at one of the Williamsburg Mancuso shows. Good thing I took the first cuts — the rest of each bolt sold fast (in 3 hours) at my booth, and I remember how excited those quilters were when they spotted those fabrics — it was like a feeding frenzy then!

Fabric does that to us — it jogs our memory and our senses. With the fabrics in this challenge, I remember the fabrics — when and where they were bought. One cotton is a VSF (Very Special Fabric) silk screen print that I bought about 10 years ago. That VSF has been saved so it could be used on a special project.

Piece by piece, I can look at each of these fabrics and something about it will trigger a memory: the manufacturer, the color, the fabric design…Something about each piece has a bit of history or memory attached to it. Piece by piece, there’s a little story with each bit of cloth. All that’s needed is a little bit of remembering.