remnants

Over the last month or two, I have been ruminating about remnants, which was our current theme for tangled Textiles.  I thought of many different ways to express it, beginning with Autumn leaves, the remnants of summer, but eventually my thoughts turned around to fabric remnants, of which I have loads, although not the run of the mill kind.  One day I remembered that I had some very old, remnants from the late 70s and that was the start of my piece.
Deep in the dark recesses of my cupboards an english piecing quilt which I started in my teens lurked.  It has travelled with me all these years (and there are quite a few) and gone through many incarnations, but I thought some of the pieces would be perfect for this.
Because I have just turned 50 (oops), I selected 50 hexagons to use in my piece.

Originally, this was how I intended to lay them out.  I spent a long time trying to arrange 50 pieces symmetrically, but I now know that that was impossible.

This is what I came up with.  I had a piece of satin with painted fusible on one side and a torn edge in the middle ready to do a landscape and I arranged the hexagons along the changeover between the two blues.  I wanted some little escapes to represent where my life is going and where it has been.

Of course, when I got down to piecing the hexagons, I came up on the same problem I have always had and that is that they are not all the same size, so instead of piecing them, I covered them with bridal tulle and sewed around them with my favourite god thread from the recycle depot.

You can see here the gold thread and how they don't all line up, but I just went with it.  I extended the lines beyond the hexagons to represent all the futures that might be.

Even my stitching wasn't perfect, but I went with that, too, as it went with the imperfect arrangement.

These fabrics are remnants of my past, they include fabric from my softball uniform, my school uniform, my favourite dress (that was when I WORE dresses, lol), the dresses my sister and I wore to my older sister's wedding, my first sewing assignment at school, my staggers jeans, my hessian bag I took everywhere and lots more.  I left the basting and papers in, too because they were full of history and meaning.  Originally, I intended to put a pin in each hexagon.  The pins were collected in my travelling days and are from all over the country, but I decided that was a bit too much.

So that is my piece for Tangled Textiles, don't forget to hop over and have a look at the pieces by my blog friends.