Upcycled Blue Jeans and Love

At least 5 or 6 years ago, I saw my sister (she’s really an in law and not my biological sister, but she is my sister, if you get my meaning) making the cutest little bluejean totes for her girls. (She had to make lots of them because of how many daughters and grands and miscellaneous close non relatives to whom she wishes to share her considerable talent).

Since that time Judy has made quilts for those she love for various reasons. Some got married, some had babies. She is an excellent seamstress, her basement workshop a place you like to be. It smells of light machine oil mixed with old wood stove and decorated in stacks of fabric and a cat named Carter, who also lined the shelves. Carter guards, from atop his perch, lazily grooming his nether regions. The wood stove heats up in the cold, rural Missouri winter, sending heat up and around the house. Judy’s sewing machine sits on a table that looks out on a lake.  There is always a project or two in progress. And a tea glass on the table. Or cup of the hotter version, light steam floating above it.

During that time 6 years ago and intervening, she has collected blue jeans. They were cast off from many and came from many places, among them, a few from my own sons.

The threads, each warp and weft, have been places.  If fabric carried memory, of the kind we recognize, there would be a lot of story in the jeans she collected.

As it is, she made me a quilt of them. Because I love Texas and because I love maps, she made me a quilt just right for picnics.

She loves me. As I do her.

I like to think of her fingers working the seams. I like to wonder about the colors of blue, dark or purple and bluish white, of the jeans in my quilt.

You see? She surrounded two states, mine and Bob’s, the smallest part of our lives as we get older, with the state where most of our lives and memories dwell.

God bless Texas, but really God bless us all.

Thank you Judy.