LIFE IS COMPOSED OF MANY LITTLE BITS AND PIECES

Dress patterns call for more material than is actually needed. This was a statement of Mama's made to her Sewing 101 class of three little daughters gathered around the big dining room table. She would spread less yardage of gingham, dimity, nainsook, bengaline or any other of the old-time materials than the pattern called for. "But you must still be careful to save every little scrap," she would say, and we'd shake our heads affirmatively showing we'd made not-to-be-forgotten mental notes.

She would show us how to fold and turn the material so that there would actually be a few little squares or triangular pieces left over even though less yardage than called for had been used. These she would let us toss into a basket that wasn't so labeled but which we knew was for containing quilt scraps. And with string quilts in vogue then, there was scarcely a raveling of the precious material not put to use.

In case someone doesn't know, a string quilt was made of tiny strips of assorted materials of various lengths, sewn together to make a long strip the width of the quilt to be. Then another and another next to it as the scraps accumulated. There was no pattern, rhyme or reason, just an inherent knowledge of what colors might look good next to each other.

Sometimes a strip designed to be two inches wide might have six or seven pieces to it, sewn end to end, before it was wide enough to go across the bed. Maybe the last two inches of the strip actually had to be pieced of two one inch strips sewn together so as to make it fit the two inch strip.

Maybe the next strip would be designed to be one inch wide in order to make use of the tinier scraps. It might even have to have several pieces of half inch materials sewn together.

Sound tedious? It was. But we had no illegal dumps or landfill problems then.

Some of the old string quilts resembled marvelous pieces of mosaic work suitable for a Byzantine wall hanging.

That was the America I grew up in. Waste not, waste not, waste not, and that string quilt complex is with me today, particularly in the category of time.

If you like this image of your life being made of little bits and pieces of time, let me make a quantum leap and say "carpe diem" (seize the moment"); a quantum leap because it was old Horace (you remember him, (circa 65-8 B.C.) who first said it. His meaning, so history professors told me was, Seize the moment for tomorrow there may be none.

So, seize your little scraps of time, tomorrow there may be none. See, today, the rainbow as the sun shines through the fountain's spraying waters. Hear the train whistle as it comes, warningly, through town. Have a microscope ready so you can study a snowflake as it falls on your coat sleeve. Smell the woodsmoke from your neighbor's fireplace or your own. Study which feathered friend is boss at the feeders.

"But," you might say, "what about a boring assembly line job or the arrows of pain and sorrow?" Dark scraps, I'll admit. But as I recall, the prettiest old string quilts were those with lengths of black and dark blue interspersed because they made the bright strips stand out and grab your attention. May it be so with your life's "quilt."

Maybe, if we don't weary, we could wind up our lives like a mosaic "quilt" suitable to hang in Celestial halls of the Many Mansions! Horace, not being sentimental, wouldn't say anything like that. He was awfully smart.

REJOICE!