Drivin' Away From The Wreck Of The Day!

Yep...it's that ugly. This is my garage sale challenge quilt...don't stare at it too long, I got a feeling it will do the same kind of damage as looking directly into a solar eclipse will do. Oh Mama, it ain't pretty!

My Guild, Twisted Stitchers, put out this challenge in May...the goal..make a quilt out of fabric and materials you buy from a garage sale or at a Goodwill or second-hand store. No shopping at fabric stores or any stores that carry fabric. Being a member of the Sexutive (that's our pet name for the executive, we gave it to ourselves...cuz...well...we can dream...right), I felt I must participate and set a good example for our members...so my intentions were honorable despite the horror I created...honest.

I didn't think it would be so hard...but in hindsight...hell, I shoulda known. I mean what kind of fabric can you hope to find at a garage sale...think about that! Oh sure, every once in a while, you might strike gold and find something wonderful. Chances are those are the treasures of a dead relative, and the seller has no idea of their worth or beauty, they just want em' gone and all the better if they can make a buck off a' ole Aunt Bessy (who is likely turnin' over in her grave!).

But here's how it goes with most quilter's who send fabric to a garage sale....or worse Goodwill. Firstly, you unearth this fabric, you bought...oh...15 years ago or more....and you look at it and the little voice in your head says..."will I ever use that?". And you're sure you better save it, cuz fer sure you will need just that piece the minute you get rid of it. Then 5 more years goes by....and your finally at that "what the hell was I thinkin' stage." You mourn your loss and ask your 20 closest quilting friends if they would like to have it. Each one of them turns you down....all muttering something about already having too much fabric, and you want to believe that...but inside....you know!

So you tuck it away til next spring, where it will have a spot of honor on your Garage sale table. You just know there's gotta be someone out there that will just love it...but there's not a sucker on earth who will part with the reduced by the end of the day price of a buck. So now and only now....it's off to Goodwill.

Enter Nad

I did the best I could honest! You try matching that sickly yellow and ick brown with any other fabric...dare ya! The black I thought was cotton...ain't...and seemed to shrink everytime I touched the iron to it, so it shrank, and be damned if this puppy would lay flat even before I quilted it. I weighed it down with ten pounds of thread by stippling it right to death (not that you will ever notice since the ugly even overpowers that!

And there you have it. Uglier than my Ugly Fabric Challenge quilt...crookeder (new word for the day people!) than the very first quilt I ever did....and perfectly suitable to hang in the very back of my garage so I can spend the rest of my life...... drivin' away from the wreck of the day!