Quilted thoughts
My Aunt made me a quilt for my fiftieth birthday. Bright colours filled the blocks with images and patterns reminiscent of days past. Days when none of us were grey and the wrinkles we wore were from a life too busy to iron, rather than the ones pressed into our flesh by living.She had resisted joining the neighbourhood-quilting group when she moved to her new house. Sitting around quilting is for “Old People” she said. Finally, defeated by loneliness and boredom, she relented and gave it a try. Like a crack head on the corner, urban or otherwise, she was hooked! No fabric store is safe from her search to add to her fabric stash, feeding her need.Why am I writing this? Is it an expose’ on the latest secret lives of middle aged women? Perhaps, but it’s also a “True Confession”, like any junkie, she introduced me to her drug of choice. “Come on, give it a try…all the cool old women are doing it, even the not so old women are doing it…you don’t want to feel left out…. Do you?” Now I too have a textile monkey on my back.Not so different from my hippie days, I go ten miles to another village to get “The Good Stuff”. I’m no longer happy with the common, lesser quality of the cloth found at the market stalls. Similar to my days of driving through the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz when the local home grown just didn’t give the buzz it used to. I want the Acapulco Gold of fabrics, I want the Maui Wowee, Moda fabrics, Red hairs of Rowan weavers, and of course, the Thai sticks of Thimbleberries cloth. When in my youth I used to watch “Reefer Madness” and howl with laughter, I now watch “An American Quilt” and laugh at the mistakes the “quilters” perform pretending to know the craft.Sitting in front of my machine this morning, I began wondering why this particular craft, hobby or art, is so addictive. I’ve pondered my own life and reaction to this journey known as quilting.Perhaps there is a genetic pull, past generations of women speaking through our DNA, “Keep your family warm, you don’t know what tomorrow may bring, give them something to remember you by.”Maybe it’s a way to fill our days. With all the modern appliances we have Washday is more like wash hour, and then what? Our husbands are asleep in front of the TV, or out playing golf. We can cut fabric, sew, read quilting magazines and form our plans of attack, I mean our plans of a quilt!Another thought crossed my mind. Quilting is not just being creative, quilting, is controlled creation. If we make a mistake, the stitches go wrong, the colours clash, or we just wish we had done it differently – we can. The seam-ripper is near by. More fabric can be purchased, cut and sewn.We cannot re-make our spouses, not for lack of trying and a divorce or two along the way. Our children cannot go back to infancy for another jab at rearing them. Changing the pattern of their lives is in their hands. Lets hope we’ve oiled their machines well, and given them enough thread! However, we can re-do our quilts, our new babies.Quilting is also an extension of ourselves and a reflection of how we feel about the person we make the quilt for. It’s our love wrapping around them, our acknowledgement of who they are, what they have done and where they have been. It’s our dreams for them, beauty, tranquillity, harmony, warm nights and comfort.So perhaps that is the real reason we quilt, become addicted to it and keep making things for people we care about. We want them to know they are appreciated, noticed in the hectic world we live in, and that we have taken time to make something special just for them.In the Bible, King David wrote a Psalm (a song) to God saying,Psalm 139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.When God hems us in, he keeps us from unravelling, from falling out and being trampled on in this busy world. When we make these quilts, we are doing the same thing for those we make these quilts for. We are putting this special thought for them together, and keeping it from unravelling. The quilt becoming an analogy for them, who and what they are to us.On the other hand, it could be a way to keep us from spending all our time sitting in front of the refrigerator!