Bounty, Beauty, and Birthdays

Remember a while back I posted my huge haul from thrift store shopping? While I've had out of town company, I've been cutting up those thrift store shirts, tossing the seams, and consolidating the shirt parts to take up a LOT less space. I realized a couple weeks ago, that right now there is not one single bed in my house with a quilt on it. I have a quilt top finished that is destined for the queen sized guest bed, but it's not pin-basted or quilted yet. I have old ratty blankets on the grandkid guest beds, my DIL has a comforter on her bed, and I have a bedspread on mine, because the quilt we had on ours was falling apart. 

I decided while cutting apart these shirts, that I'll be making two twin sized quilts for the grandkid guest room from shirts. With all my deadline quilts well past due, I need something easy, so I'm thinking 6" HST's set in a barn raising pattern. That is a larger size piece than I usually use from shirts, so I'm saving all the backs of the shirts for this project.

These are the backs of the shirts I've "de-boned" so far. I'm doing a few shirts a day among other projects, and I hope to reach the end of my thrift store bounty by next weekend. I think all the rest of the shirt pieces will fit in one box when I'm done. They really do take up a lot less space when cut apart and the unusable bits are tossed. 

Yesterday I got my hair cut. For most people that's not a blog-worthy item, but for me, maybe it is. 

This is what got cut off. In case you can't read the numbers, the longest bits are over 21", with most being around 20", not a small amount of hair to cut off. So, are you wondering how long my hair is now???

Still past my shoulders...

And long enough for a ponytail! My hair grows REALLY fast, it always has, and cutting off this much is no big deal because I know it will be long again before I know it. 

You probably think my hair is the beauty part of my post, but it's not. The beauty and birthday part is combined. You see, in a couple weeks I will be turning 50! How that much time has passed I have no idea! I don't FEEL that old. I want to make MYSELF a quilt to celebrate turning 50. This is actually the first time I've felt weird about getting older. Turning 30 and 40 were no big deal to me, but somehow 50 feels HUGE! It could just be because the last 18 months have been incredibly stressful, with lots of nasty things to deal with, so I'm pretty overwhelmed already. 

That's why I've decided to turn my life verse into a quilt. The Bible verse which has always been closest to my heart is 

 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  Romans 8:28

The last 18 months have been really hard, and I've had to remind myself that God can turn bad things around and use them for good. To give myself a visual reminder of that, I want to make an ugly fabric quilt, or in my case, a Romans 8:28 quilt. On facebook, I asked my friends and family to send me a piece of fabric they consider ugly, and that if they did, I would include it in my quilt. 

You know the saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? Well, evidently, so is ugly!

Here is what I've been sent so far, and most of it is not ugly in my opinion. (To be fair, the person who sent the cute little elephants knows it's not ugly, but they wanted it to be a memorial fabric for a family member of ours) Do you have an ugly fabric that you wouldn't mind passing on? If you do, comment on the post telling me so,  and I'll contact you privately with my address. I'm really looking forward to this challenge, trying to make something good out of ugly-ish bits. I'm not God, and I can't turn things around like He can, but I am excited to try in this small way.