‘The ultimate in recycling!’ exclaimed the sign. Josie and I were in the Fairtrade shop underneath St. Michael at the Northgate looking for a present for her niece, and I had noticed a basket full of remnants from a cloth factory, parcelled up into bundles of squares.
It seemed like a great idea. I could buy these offcuts which had no sentimental value, practise making a quilt or some patchwork cushion-covers, end up with some handmade patchwork somethings to decorate my flat or to give away, and then turn to my stash of nostalgic remnants armed with confidence and new skills. I bought two bundles and took them home very excitedly to sort into colour combinations and patchwork designs.
That was six years ago, and I have been lugging these ‘non-sentimental’ pieces with me from flat to flat ever since. Over time they have acquired a legend and dust of their own, and reproach me for their remnanty status just as loudly as the other scraps and old bits of fabric I have squirreled away.
But! there is no time like a new decade for following things through and starting new projects. These black and white printed fabrics were always intended for a quilt for my mum, and as she was the only person I didn’t give a handmade gift to this Christmas I am hoping to have it finished in time for her birthday at the end of March. Don’t laugh. It won’t be anything fancy – just squares sewn together, possibly quilted somehow although I’m not certain about that, with some batting and a backing and some binding.
‘Well,’ I thought, as I typed the above post, ‘now that I’ve written it down it does sound like a little bit of work, but really, how hard can it be? Pull your socks up, self, and face your fabric demons!’ and I flung the squares blithely into my washing machine.
Two weeks, three floods of my kitchen and one £95 call-out fee to the washing-machine repair people later, I am poorer and (hopefully) wiser. The little fraying threads at the edge of the squares worked their way loose in the wash, and travelled down the siphon to clog up the one-way valve nicely. (As this wasn’t a problem with the machine itself, but the plumbing under my sink, it wasn’t covered by the guarantee). On the right you can see the little wodge of threads I pulled out of the pump when the machine first stopped working, and on the left the bundle of threads I pulled and cut away from the squares to separate them when I took them out of the machine. Yup, I know.
The squares are therefore smaller, and more frayed around the edges. My kitchen floor is cleaner, and I got to know some of my neighbours a little better when they offered me the use of their washing machines. And I am fighting the urge to jump up and down on those squares, tear them into shreds, and post them into the fabric recycling bin round the corner.
But! My New Year’s Resolutions haven’t faded into the January gloom yet, and I am nothing if not stubborn. Instead, I am going to use this sad tale as a Learning Point (can you tell I spend many of my waking hours in a hospital?), and make the damn quilt. I am never again going to buy yarn or fabric which doesn’t make my heart sing and my soul leap, no matter how cheap it is or how worthy the cause. I am not going to worry about the quilt not being good enough, and I am never ever going to write a post which ends with the facile rhetorical question ‘How hard can it be?’.
Note to self: Buy some pinking shears.

























