All of us are patched together.  Pieces from different experiences.  Different interactions with different people.  None of us are whole.  As any quilter will tell you, that's a very good thing.  

I have rarely met anyone who has a color-coordinated soul. By that, I mean, it seems like it would be a rare thing for a person to have variations of experiences in their lives that all harmonize with each other. Life is a scrap quilt type of endeavor. No one is able to, exclusively, choose what colors or patterns go into their quilt.  There is a sense where we can decide what and who we will interact with. But usually, life happens and we take what comes. Some things are inescapable.  Don't like orange?  Tough luck, some orange got in there. 

One of the really neat things about quilting and life is that we do get to choose what things we want to focus on. We get to choose how they are arranged in our lives. Don't like orange?  We can chop it up into smaller, less significant pieces and they'll hardly be noticeable.  They'll actually compliment the other colors in our quilt.  And maybe we have this one beautiful piece of fabric that we want to have as a focus piece. It's our quilt and we can arrange the pieces as we see fit.  Put that beautiful fabric in the center where we can enjoy it. We can obsess about that orange fabric- maybe negative things that have happened- or we can choose to minimize them and appreciate that beautiful fabric. 

My nephew was just handed the most hideous of all fabrics.  And it's a huge piece.  His two week old daughter died suddenly and unexpectedly.  What does one do with that?  Do we really want to chop it up and scatter it among the other pieces?  We might not have a choice about that.  I'm open to suggestions as to what is to be done with this ugly fabric.  It's center stage right now, but all of us quilters know, the seam ripper is a useful and necessary tool. At some later date we can move it away from the middle of the quilt. Her short life is represented by a beautiful piece of fabric, but it's struggling for attention. Her death is represented by a truly ugly fabric, but I hope that it will fade some with use. Become less overpowering to the overall beauty of the quilt.  

Every life and every quilt is unique. Some are fancier than others. Some have a utilitarian beauty to them.  An appreciation can be felt for them in that the maker used what he had to it's best advantage.  I've seen some quilts made from some pretty ugly fabric and I loved them.  By the same token, I've seen quilts made from lovely fabrics that have just lacked that special something to make it truly beautiful. What kind of quilt are you making?  Does it have holes where you tried to rip out the undesirable fabrics?  Experiences and people who enter our lives can't be removed once they have passed through. Maybe we can choose to not add any more of that particular pattern to the mix. But once they've made their way in, they're in.  Are we finding peace with the ugly bits? Are we just turning out the lights and refusing to look at it?  Do we find pleasure in the process?