Salvaging the unused hexies

Today is Friday, at our house it is often movie night.  I ordered pizza and decided to come disassemble some hexies until it arrives.  This is a picture of the unused hexies.  Before the pizza arrived I went from ten piles to seven.

I am taking the paper out and putting the pieces through a wash to test the fabric.  I want to know how strong they are before I go through the exercise of putting a whole quilt together by hand.  My laundry bag is more than half full, as I had some rectangular fabric pieces given to me as well.  After I wash them I will take the time to examine them, iron them and sort them.  This is when you get personal with the fabric.  Sounds silly I know but it is like getting a feeling for the fabric and determining where in the piecing it will go.

I believe these pieces were in the unused bag because the hexies were not quite up to snuff.  These hexagons were made by someone else.  Someone different than the two hexagon quilts I am in the process of quilting.  The shapes and the way they were put together were very different.  You can tell just by the way the person positioned the paper on the fabric.  Another clue was the way the fabric was attached or sewn onto the paper.  Even the type if thread was different.

The above picture shows why I had to take them apart.  Hexagons are like a puzzle piece.  Each piece fits into the next to create a quilt.  If someone had tried to put these ones together, they would have gotten very frustrated.  None of the hexagon sides are equal.  I think these hexies were the rejects, but the fabric is still great.  I am going to put these pieces through training and get them into shape.  We are going to have the greatest team ever, by the time this quilt is done (Yes, yes, I know, the little games I play, but they help me make life interesting).

Someone asked me one time why go through all the bother?  Why not just start fresh with new fabric?  I always find the questions difficult to answer.  There is something therapeutic about helping the original maker bring her dreams of a finished quilt to completion.  I always wonder about the makers.  Like, what they were thinking when they made a particular design change to a pattern to make it their own.  Why they chose a specific colour or layout.  I am also drawn to the older traditional patterns and older fabrics.  You just cannot get that from new fabrics of today.  Even the reproductions do not have the exact feel and variety that was available from an older quilt.  Now a days we tend to be all matchy, matchy.

I find it difficult to explain, but in my heart I just feel that they are right, that they are perfect, in all their quirks and imperfections.