Fabric Reincarnation

Have you ever seen the movie "The Dress"? It's a dark Dutch film that follows a dress from its design through various hemlines and second hand shops to scraps. Everyone who comes into contact with the dress has incredibly bad luck. Not a feel-good pick-me-up movie. But what I liked best was seeing the various reincarnations of the fabric. (Spoiler Alert) It kept me watching as all the characters died off. Anyway, anyone who has ever been to a fabric store with me might be surprised to find out that I like to repurpose fabric.

Here is a photo of me wearing a skirt that my friend Lilo gave me. It was taken in 2005.  I am outside Lebanon, Kansas at the geographic center of the contiguous United States! Definitely an outing that called for a cute skirt. Lilo and I lived together in Miami, now she lives in Ibiza and I haven't seen her in years. But I have fantastic memories of going to the beach with her, running into the waves, and screaming and shouting in that way you can only do at the beach without looking completely insane.


I'm sure Lilo got this skirt second hand, she got everything second hand. I loved this skirt. The colors are great and it was so comfortable. But its soft faded look became washed out and my style has moved on a bit. But all is not lost. Now the skirt is a quilt!

I'm not one for quilt patterns, I always am certain that I can figure out the blocks by myself. And everything went well until I had to trim the blocks down and I lost all the points. I need to practice making my own patterns. This picture shows the resulting zig zag lattice still has a nice effect from this distance. I don't know how many people wore this skirt besides Lilo and I and I don't know who might use the quilt after me. But it's interesting to imagine.