Recycled Plaid Love!

I received a lovely email from Leah with the story of how her wonderful quilt came to be!

I hope you are as inspired as I was when I received it!

She writes:

Bonnie,I wanted to tell you a story about the quilt I just finished using your Smith Mountain Morning quilt pattern and send you some pictures.My dad has Alzheimer’s and has been in a nursing home for 4 years.  As you can imagine it has been difficult for all of us. But especially for my mom.  They have been married for 61 years.

About 2 years ago my mother gave me 5 flannel shirts of my dad’s and asked me to make a quilt from them.  I confess that I was not enthused.  The flannels were red and blue plaids.  I could not really think of what to do with them and I just wanted to get this out of the way quickly.  So I cut the shirts apart and cut them into rectangles – 6 in x 12 in and 3 in x 6 in.

I then sewed the large rectangles together – short end to short end – about 7 in each row.  I then set the rows apart by plain flannel sashings – alternating red and blue.  I then used the smaller rectangles as borders.  I got it all together.  Laid it out on the floor and stepped back.

I HATED it!!!!!

I realized that I would be embarrassed to have my name associated with this quilt.  I am not saying that I am a great quilter.  But I want to like the quilts I make and feel proud to show them to others. I also realized that I would NEVER complete this quilt because of how much I disliked it.  I didn’t know what to do and I was frustrated.   So I folded the quilt up and set it aside. I moved on to other projects – including your Orca Bay Mystery.
 

Leah’s Quilt Adaptation!

But the flannel quilt kept haunting me.  About 9 months after I set it aside, I decided that I had to do something with the flannel.  I began to look for quilt patterns that used plaids. I stumbled across your Smith Mountain Morning quilt pattern.  I knew this was it!

I took the quilt top apart.  .  I wasn’t sure of my mother’s plans for the quilt but I thought she might want to put it on my dad’s bed at the nursing home.  So it needed to be close to twin size.  Since I had already cut the shirts up, I knew that I probably wouldn’t have enough flannel to make the quilt twin size. So I bought some more flannel.

I adapted your pattern to put a solid square in the middle of the stars because the flannel raveled and stretched too much.  All the star points, some of the logs and most of the border triangles are from my dad’s shirts.  For the back I bought a men’s shirting fabric and included the extra courthouse steps block. I quilted this on my domestic sewing machine.
 

Quilt Back!

Now I love the quilt and I know my mother will too!  Thank you  so much for all you do for us quilters.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Happy quilting!


Leah Davis

I LOVE what you did with this, Leah! Thank you so much for sharing the story of your Dad and how this quilt came to be.

Smith Mountain Morning is found in Scraps & Shirttails II!
 
I’m off for a Charlotte’s Basket’s workshop with the Wings Falls Quilters this morning….it’s going to be another fun filled very full day with close to 40 students!
 
Bring it on…I’ve had a good night’s sleep and I’M READY!