During World War II my grandfather was a pilot in the South Pacific. Being a pilot meant getting issued silk maps. Silk might sound like an odd material for a maps but it was for the durability and waterproof qualities (it gets wet but doesn’t break down like paper or cotton).

Well silk, then as now, is an expensive commodity. It would be a shame to let it go to waste. So as a wedding gift the local nuns pieced them together along with I assume a parachute to make a quilt for my grandparents after the war.

It’s hard to see in the pictures but the hand stitching is very tight and is in an intricate pattern. So this exists in a weird limbo. It was always seen as too nice to use but then too sentimental/nice to get rid of. But that also is why it is still in essentially new condition.

So take a gander at some original maps from 1944 as well as some of the way that surplus was recycled.