Four Reasons to Make a Quilt by Elisha Webster Emerson
I am a neophyte quilter. My technique is crude, and my vision, that of an amateur. It is fair to say, (and I justify myself by writing), that I am a quilter, nonetheless. I have made one queen-sized, patchwork quilt. By hand.
Reason Number One: (or) The Strange Mating Rituals of a Romantic
The story begins with a quilt covering my love interest’s bed, sewn by his grandmother, forty years prior.
“Completely by hand?” I said, running my hand over the quilt’s expanse. Uneven dark thread bordered hundreds of intricate triangles arranged like stars. Pale colors gave way to vibrant colors. Her embroidery transversed the surface in a cerebral latticework of swirls.
My love interest nodded, and I blushed despite myself. I thought about his grandmother, who had, so long ago, drawn her fingers over the fabric masterpiece. So strange that, years later, I would enter the picture only to experience hot flashes of yearning for not only one, but two of her creations; her grandson, and now her quilt!
I was suddenly overcome with an absurd and whimsical sense of connection with the old lady.
“I want to make one,” I said, rather rashly, in retrospect.
“Really? A quilt? You totally should.” He was excited by the idea. I was excited about him being excited.
“Yeah. Yeah. I will. I’ll make a quilt.”
My momentum of commitment halted upon passing through the pinnacle of realization–Did I just commit to sewing a quilt?!–but I quickly regained my composure, and chugged on, accumulating speed as I went. I gesticulated nobly and with increased enthusiasm fueled by his leaning forward, his arousing (aroused) darting for my hands, I nodded once more.
“Okay. It’s settled then. I’ll make a quilt.”
Reason Number Two: (or) It’s a Grand Day for a Matrilineal Parade
I imagined that where there art quilters, there shalt be quilt circles–small communities where quilters go to feel safe, supported, inspired, validated. Needing to experience all of these things, I visited my grandmother, a quilting queen, an Amazon Applique Artist. That woman has birthed a legacy of quilts; a quilt for every one of her six daughters, six son-in-laws, one son, twenty-three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren–with quilts to spare.
I went to my grandmother with romantic illusions: There would be quilting of course, but interspersed would be roaring, wood stove fires, yards of gorgeous fabric, golden thimbles, a treadle machine, and a butter churn for good measure. What I found instead, was not only disheartening but somewhat tragic, in a coming-of-age way sort of way. Sure, there was fabric in abundance. Quilts in their various stages lay everywhere–the embryonic quilt partially cut from folds of material, the fetus quilt, cut, pinned, and undergoing the assembly process, and the newborn quilts, the little darlings, tossed over chairs, hung from walls, draped over couches, and folded on tables.
What executed my Quilt Fairy was not this excess of prenatal bedding, but rather what rattled and hummed in its midst. What I found in place of my Normal Rockwell reverie was something more befitting The Jetsons. Three mighty machines, the latest in sewing technology, hummed merrily and somewhat menacingly along, chewing fabric, while three chatty ladies (my grandmother included) looked casually on.
“See, it’s so easy. I can make a ham and cheese sandwich and quilt at the same time!” My Aunt Debbie grinned.
My Aunt Debbie is a husky x-college rugby player turned soccer mom. She tackles her “craft time” as I would imagine she tackled the girthy defensive line women who opposed her.
“But how do they work?” I asked, smiling through my horror, as my Utopian Quilt Land, bedecked with synchronized rocking chairs and tales-of-old, dismantled into a blitzy, industrial nightmare.
“It’s easy. You’ve got this disk and it does the work for you.”
“Wow,” I said.
Ginny, the third member of my grandmother’s quilt circle said very little. She was too busy with her sewing machine’s computer screen. She pinched her lips and pressed a button, summoning the creation of at least fifty embroidered doilies.
Her machine hummed; as did my grandmother.
“Isn’t technology great?” She smiled dreamily, and I nodded, despite my romantic misconceptions, my bohemian elitism.
I wanted to ask about the journey, the process. I glanced at Ginny’s growing mountain of doilies: product, product, product.
“Technology’s completely revolutionized applique,” Aunt Debbie said, as if to impress me.
“Like airplanes revolutionized travel,” my grandmother added.
“Like jets revolutionized travel,” Aunt Debbie corrected.
“All we need now is a time machine,” I said, but just as I said it, the machine nearest me started to beep, so I guess that was that.
Reason Number Three: (or) Quilting and the Art of Patience
Don’t get me wrong. I am not a patient person. I am holistically subservient to the immediately gratifying act–but no one likes to be subservient.
“Quilting will teach you patience,” my mother promised me over the phone.
Very well, I thought. I envisioned myself completing my project, with not only a quilt, but a saint-like patience. My writing would improve because I would not rush to the end. My cooking would improve because I would cease watching the pot. I could trade in my acrylic paints for oil-based. My relationships would improve because I would no longer expect perfection–at least not immediately.
Goodbye self-help. Hello art-of-quilting. I informed my grandmother that I preferred to make my quilt by hand.
“Wow,” she said.
“I’ll let you know how it goes,” I said.
Reason Number Four: (or) O the Glory of Accomplishment!
So I did it. I made the damned thing. All by hand.
I found a cute fabric website and ordered a grab bag of material scraps for twenty dollars a piece. I ordered two bags just to be safe.
When the fabric arrived, I bypassed any quilting manuals (PreQuilt-Me naïvely existed under the smug illusion that how-to’s are for chumps). I fingered through the delightful, though random, scraps of material and tried to systematically map out the proceeding and necessary steps that would best lead me to my ultimate and glorious goal: the finished quilt.
I decided on four by four inch squares. This size square was small enough to not reflect laziness on my part, impressing both my love interest and my grandmother, but it was not small enough to destroy me with its tedium.
Cheerfully, I found myself a ruler and a pair of scissors. I cut out my first square. Red cowgirls rode red bulls on the fabric. I assessed my work. My cutting skills were at best, mediocre. The lines were a little crooked, and–oh no–I realized with some dismay, I had forgone a seam. I had a lot to learn.
In the end, my pile of scraps (Er, mess ups) was larger than my pile of keepers, and when I preformed an inventory of usable versus unusable patches, I found my color and thematic options to be startlingly limited. If I were to do a fourteen by twenty square patchwork quilt, I would have (Some long hand multiplication later) sixteen squares to spare.
I laid out a variety of different square arrangements onto my bedroom floor. I opted for a “pattern” with a four by four center–but after that, the quilt entropied into sheer chaos. I was okay with chaos.
Next, I made piles out of the decided rows and safety-pinned paper indicators on the top squares of each row, so that I could distinguish one from the other. Then, I put on some classical music (Beethoven and friends felt appropriate regarding the context of my activity) and I stitched one square to the other.
Backwards. I sewed my squares backwards. Cursing over Carmina Burana (which also seemed appropriate), I seam-ripped with my new seam-ripper the recalcitrant and guilty seam and started again. This time, my tiny and painstaking stitches were not in vein. I folded my squares open: Viola! There they were: Two squares sewn snugly together. That wasn’t so bad, I thought, reaching for the next square and then looking beyond that square to the piles on piles of squares remaining, anxious for their turn to pass underneath my already bleeding finger tips. Oh my, I thought.
But I persevered. I sewed. Every. Damn. Day. I. Sewed. I woke up and I sewed. I went to work, and I sewed. I ate dinner (if I ate dinner), and I sewed. I lost weight. I lost hair. I lost friends. I avoided my phone. My friends left concerned massages. When people at work asked me about the quilt, they seemed nervous. My love-interest suggested maybe I take a break and go for a walk. But still, I sewed.
I finished the quilt in one month’s time. I ordered brown backing and wasted no time with fancy insulation. I sowed a blanket inside the quilt, instead.
At this point in my “Quilt Journey” the idea of the Tac as opposed to applique delighted me. “I prefer the way it looks,” I would later lie to all of my kind quilt admirers. “The yarn gives it that home-made look.”
Not that the quilt needed the yarn to achieve this effect. My squares were uneven and crooked. The backing was too short in one corner, and I had to patch it with a left over neon green scrap. The inside blanket bunched too close to the left seam.
And yet. And yet, the quilt was mine and I had done it. I laid the thing out on my bed and took pictures. My grandmother wrote me a tear-stained letter of congratulations. I invited my love-interest over and he clapped his hands together. He said the quilt was beautiful. My quilt. He kissed me and I purred.
“Do you really like it?” I asked him.
He nodded. And with great impatience, I mounted him atop my freshly quilted bed.
