Frugal Friday...memory style~Part 3

One last memory lane post to wrap up the Memorial Day weekend and Michele's challenge *VBS* One more collage of my quilts. And on to the idea of recycled materials in quilts. I have to admit I've never been a fan of recycling worn clothes into quilt pieces. The piecing and hand quilting is a lengthly process and you want the quilt to hold up. Used clothing won't wear the same as the new fabric used. The worn clothes pieces will fade out, wear out and need mending much faster than your new fabric. But...
 I have at times and for certain reasons, used recycled clothes. Of course, sometimes the piece of clothing your taking apart might be brand new and un worn or only worn slightly, that works fine. This quilt is one of my first attempts at using orphan blocks and other odd bits. I knew from the beginning it would be mostly, red,white and blue with a bit of yellow tossed in. In order to have enough fabrics with red, I did use some recylcled garments. I made it in 1984 for my 8 yr.old 3rd DS. He still uses it today, and it's held up pretty well. But..it was out of circulation and at my house for a large part of that 25 years. I gave it back to him last summer when he set up his own single household.
 This is the second quilt I've made from using clothing. Everything in this top is from a friends DH. He died quite unexpectedly and I offered to make a memory quilt from his shirts. The only purchased fabric is the light blue in the 4 patches. Even the gray setting squares are from one of his shirts. She only sent 4 or 5, and there is not alot of variety in the 4 patches. Back when I first started making quilts I didn't know not to use ALL types of fabric. I had started with a Grandmother's Flower garden and was hand piecing it. I didn't use any really odd stuff like velvet or satin, but I did use some quite loose weave fabrics, and some vintage fabric.And some clothing pieces. Luckily the quilt hasn't had much use over the years and the only hexagons that shows distress and should be replaced are the vintage fabric. I'm not sure if it was the age of the fabric or the fact they are in the last outside row and might have been handled more.
 And last but not least, the reason I make quilts *VBS* Michele asked about our connection to the scrap quilts we make. At least that's how I understood what she said. I think, for me, it's largely about memories, and a dash of that "playing" I love. You learn alot about yourself while making a scrap quilt. I can't tell you exactly how that works, but thinking about it for awhile.
One of the best parts is "connection"...I was piecing some 4 patches last week, and while pulling lt. squares, one or two of them were white with little colored stars. Kind of KP Kids fabric. It was the background fabric in the Jewel Box that I pieced and quilted for DGS# 2. The year was 1996, he'll be 13 in August *VBS* I am hooked on the visual connection between B's quilt(1996) and the donation Kitchen Sink(with 4 patches galore) that I am piecing right now. I love being able to think(or more often say outloud) "that piece came from "----"'s quilt. I love saying to friend Jean or Betsy, "that's one your scraps, remember?". I probably could do that if I were to make carefully planned out quilts, but there would be no element of surprise. And I love being a treasure hunter and finding little gems as I work. As you can see, I really do LOVE scraps *VBS*