Scrapyard Lullaby

Man is it ever obvious that I need to upgrade my $40 burner phone for better pictures! C’est la vie.

I am a big proponent of both using what you can and using less. Waste not, want not they say. I save pretty much every usable scrap and try to keep them in some semblance of order. I’ve found many projects create so much waste and I am way too cheap to just toss perfectly good fabric. For this quilt, a gift for a darling friend and co-worker for her retirement, I wanted to make something scrappy for a couple of reasons. One, this gal is scrappy (in a good way!); don’t let her peaceful demeanor and size fool you as she will always best you in athletic/adventure pursuits. And second, she is one of the most environmentally conscious people I know. You should see the contraptions she creates with take-out containers! So a scrappy piece fits well with the recipient.

Making a non-patterned piece purely out of scraps is like playing “Iron Chef” out of your pantry and freezer. (Something that I am sure a lot of us have been doing these days.) With scraps, you never know what your finished product will be and you will never be able to recreate it. Absolutely zero design planning went into this project, I simply pieced intuitively. I was fortunate to have some nice large cream and brown triangles so I kicked things off using those, then kept slicing and sewing things together until it became something I liked. I made this over a week in the mornings before I went to work. Being creative is a wonderful way to start my workday and prepare me for the busyness that lies ahead. I suppose that I could exercise or meditate or do “meal prep”, but sewing and listening to music is way more fun!

This quilt is named “Scrapyard Lullaby” after a Chris Whitley song and I was fortunate enough to listen only to Chris during this process. Chris was (he is no longer alive) an amazing songwriter and guitarist from Texas with a raw, bluesy sound. I would never categorize his work as blues in the traditional sense but you can hear that influence throughout. The first album we had was “Dirt Floor” and I’m sure we listened to this everyday while carpooling for at least a month straight. We could not get enough! Then my husband bought “Dislocation Blues” with Jeff Lang and I bought “Living with the law” and we both devoured these and then swapped. “Living with the law” has become one of my favorite albums of all time and shout-out here to the one and only Black Mold, a DJ on WWOZ in New Orleans, that recommended the album to me and succinctly dubbed it “badass” in all caps. I couldn’t agree more with his assessment! This album is world class and it is coming to my desert island with me. My only regret is that I haven’t been rocking all of these albums since their release in the 90’s. I had heard of Chris Whitley but I never truly heard Chris Whitley.

The song “Scrapyard Lullaby” is the first song on “Dirt Floor” and behold just a snippet of this masterpiece: Cause the chrome do rust and the dust do shine/ Broken could be golden in it’s very own time. Poignant, right? And all of his songs are chock full of gems like this. And his guitar playing, my word is it awesome! Listening to Chris Whitley whose sound manages to be somehow both raw and polished was the perfect acoustic accompaniment to this quilt.

I have gifted this quilt to my darling friend and tears were shed during the exchange. We are huggers and not being able to hug her felt like a giant ripoff. I am so glad that she appreciates it because I loved making something for someone so dear. Chris Whitley my friends, check him out. And long live the scraps!

Albums listened to: Chris Whitley “Dirt Floor” and “Living with the Law” and Chris Whitley and Jeff Lang “Dislocation Blues”.