"Haberdashery" quilt pattern

This pattern is Haberdashery, by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet Co.  Someone gave it to me, and I can't find it on her website (though it looks like it was part of her currently unavailable "Fashion Fun" collection), so I don't know if you can buy it; it might have been an exclusive in Fat Quarter Shop's Sew Sampler subscription box.  The repeating motif of hats is darling, and simple enough to be a palate cleanser between more complicated projects. 

​This is a quick project: a few nights of cutting and counting squares until I have enough; a few nights of assembly, and the top is now tucked away in a bag of to-be-quilted items.  I don't have much to say about the sewing.  However, I'd like to honor Lori Holt's wish from her "About Me" page on her website: "​My wish is that my designs . . . will inspire others to create and will also instill the desire to pass down the valuable lessons of days gone by taught to us by our mothers and grandmothers."

Making the top...

For this project, I want to use up a bunch of autumnal scraps I have, in particular a pile of muddy browns that I dislike.  They're just so... muddy.  And blobby.  But if I cut them small enough and frame them, they'll be nice!  I pair them with some dark greens and red-browns, and frame the hats with yellow.  

collecting my squares

Darn it, Karen, you have that rule for a reason!

In Lori's pattern, the hats all have their bows on the same side, but I opt for alternate sides, because the blue is so distinct from the other colors, that I want to make sure its weight is balanced around the quilt.  Here's my finished top, ready for quilting.  (This is the one I mentioned at the end of my last post, for which I am considering using the off-white fleece blanket as a batting.  The gray fleece is too dark, and kind of dulls the quilt by showing through the yellow.)  

I find pleasure in looking at the end result, and knowing I made beauty from what I considered unpromising materials.  Nevertheless, it sits in a bag, unfinished.  

The lesson...

As a kid, my material culture was all hand-me-downs and make-it-works and it's-still-goods.  We shopped as needed, not for fun.  We saved things that might be useful.  We re-used packaging.  We got our clothes at the thrift store.  (Real thrift stores, not the overpriced "vintage" markets of my current city!)  There were several reasons for this lifestyle: being poor was one of them... my dad was starting a business and supporting a family of five on what he could make as one man, so my mom did her part to stretch every cent!  Being frugal was another: both my parents were makers of some stripe, and they hated waste.  They had been trained by their parents and grandparents, people who remembered World War II and the Depression, who saved their tin-foil for re-use, and ate every bite on their plates.  

For me, this mentality was part of our family identity... we weren't "brand new" people.  We didn't pay full price.  What kind of crazy person would buy jeans at the mall for $29.99 when you could get "the same thing" at the thrift store for $5?  Of course, it's rarely the "same thing", because it's used, but in a culture of fast fashion and fast closet turnover, sometimes it is the same thing!  And it sure is fun to get what feels like a deal.  

On the other hand, every mentality has its downside, and the downside of frugality and thriftiness is hoarding and the anxiety which hoarding causes.  As an adult, I have always lived in small spaces on limited means, and my thriftiness serves and hinders in equal measure.  It serves me to be able to re-purpose cheap things to meet my needs, but I have had to combat my tendency to save every box because "it's sturdy" or "it might make a good organizer".  I have to stop myself from buying something because it's a "good deal" and I "might use that someday"!  Truthfully, if I'm not actually using it, I'm just storing it.  Do I value the item or the space more?  Moreover, I have been burned a few times when I had to move, and while downsizing and packing realized I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff I'd never used.  It's not a "deal" if you never use it.  Finally, as an act of faith, letting go of what I don't need today says that I trust God to provide what I need tomorrow.  He always has!  So I swing between hoarding and sufficiency, but always with a frugal bent.  

This quilt is a picture of hoarded items reclaimed.  I don't know where I got the ugly muddy fabric from; it was likely given to me, or I bought it in a bag of other fabric.  But I kept it even though I disliked it, because it was "perfectly good" and "could be used" and "I might need it"!  And I didn't need it.  I carried it from house to house and stored it in a drawer until, in this project, I made a point of using it.  Even then, while cutting it, I was arguing with it.  

Did sewing this quilt redeem that wasted time and space by making a larger, useful whole out of a small pile of scraps?  Or could I have let the pile of ugly scraps go years ago, and made things I loved more?  It's true, this quilt top gave me a few evenings of pleasure, and cleared my stash of fabric I disliked.  But why did that stash need clearing?  Because I was hoarding things I disliked!  That's almost as crazy as paying full price for jeans! 

Now I ask myself... why am I storing this quilt top?  So I can quilt it someday.  Do I like it enough to do so?  Will I enjoy the act of quilting it?  Or, could I let the whole project go into the world, to be finished by someone else who might actually love it?  

I think I've talked myself out of finishing this project!  The lesson of this quilt is that you can save every scrap and make something beautiful, but you don't have to.  Time and space have value, too, and both are limited.  Frugality is a virtue, but wisdom and discernment more so!