Wedding Quilt (Friday)

Detailed in the fabrics

are berries, shamrocks for luck,

leaves of growth, English roses,

gentle swirls my love loves best.

A Pink & Purple Zig-Zag Quilt

Today I finished a beautiful quilt. The quilt top was first, then sandwiching the fabrics together--patterned top, batting, a white backing with pink hearts. It took shape before my eyes, suddenly became a tangible object with a function and a purpose. My lover said, 'Think of all the moments that will happen with that quilt.' I tried to smile.

For Friday - Picking out Fabrics

Designer Prints

Fabric makes me giggle. Have I already told you that? It makes me giggle, and wiggle and want to clap my hands. Over fabric. Just bolts of fabric. Have I already written that?

Not in the children's morning programming kind of way though. Or the Made for TV movie motif. Just really excited.

I spent an hour and a half in a fabric store this afternoon. I'm still giggling.

Fabrics of Memory

This morning I trekked myself to the post office to collect the package that was 'too big for the letter box,' expecting it to be one of the graphic novels I've ordered by Ariel Schrag for a paper I want to present. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see the handwriting of one, Knits with Carrots.

Inside: Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt. In time for the recent finishing of my first quilt, Knits with Carrots got choked up reading the beautiful picturebook and decided I needed it in my collection; I quite agree.

In the picturebook, the author's Great-Gramma Anna is a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York City and from her childhood and family's clothes, the women of her family and community make a quilt to remember home. Each piece of fabric has a story and the quilt welcomes each new daughter, becomes a table cloth at the Sabbath and special occasions and acts as the wedding huppa through multiple generations.

Reading the book reminded me of the legacy that quilts can have and that just last night, I was telling Alex stories about the fabrics in our quilt. Most of the fabrics were bought specifically for the project, but still, others have stories.

Like, the softer white cotton fabric with the smaller red polka dots was from a tank top of mine. I think I found it in a thrift shop, and it, too, had been made by hand. I wore it on stage the summer before my freshman year of high school in a Talent Competition: me and three other girls did a dance routine to 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' and won 2nd place in the county fair. I kept the tank top long after I stopped wearing it; I thought it was good fabric.

Others are scraps from pillows and aprons I'd made as gifts. The inner circle of pinks were fabrics given to me from Em, my quilting guru, and pieces of those are probably in other quilts of their own.

And from this quilt, I still have more scraps--strawberries, bandanas, endless pinks--which will possibly make their way into other quilts, other projects. It makes me wonder about the depth of one's own fabric stash and the wealth of memories.

Thanks, darling.

My First Quilt

Yesterday, June 16, 2009, I finished the last stitches on my first quilt. Unable to resist, we slept with it last night. Today, however, it was washed and hung out to dry. A real quilt, begun in September 2008 as I prepared to move to across the ocean to make a new home.

I starting cutting in October. Sewing in November. Attempted to quilt it by machine in December, only to rip out all the stitching and re-pin the layers on Christmas day, before I packed up in a box and shipped it to London.

The final pins on Christmas day

A king size creation, the binding took a while to complete by hand--my great-grandma's Singer table top machine not the easiest to travel with on a airplane. But, I managed it. And as Alex say, I think it adds a nice touch.

Anchors and Strawberries just for Alex & me

It is a scrap quilt, although I wish I could say they were all scraps I had just lying around. Some, yes: the handkerchief pattern, the multiple versions of red & white polka dots. Some I found new (see: 1930s reproduction fabrics) and some from the back rooms of Yreka's finest charity shops. Some of the best finds actually. Others are from my psuedo-grandma, Em, who gave me the start to this quilt, and a few others from G'ma Jan, who's been sewing for years.

Finally settled on tying off the quilt, it works.

Ever a romantic, the pattern I chose for this quilt is called "Because Two People Fell in Love." While the nice woman from the South who submitted the pattern to a quilting magazine that she used for her daughter and son-in-law's wedding quilt may or may not approve of Alex and I's love, I felt the sentiment of the title was spot on, and just that simple.

When I started the quilt, I was piecing together what my life had been over the last years and trying to sort it into boxes and bags and suitcases, trying to predict what I might need in the next moves I would make. Piecing things together, I decided, was like the steps of making a quilt. There's "the vision," as fellow quilter Leslie and I call it, the finding of fabric, cutting the squares, laying it out to get the feel for it all.

Everything in making a quilt is one step at a time, taking things in stride, following a pattern but always bending the rules. Frustrating and rewarding. Filled with love and hard work.

As we lay in bed last night, testing the warmth of the new quilt, we were already dreaming of what a winter quilt might look like: big strips of fabric, blues and purples maybe. But for now, we have our quilt, drying on the line, summer just about to begin, two women in love.

'Because Two People Fell In Love'
(Clotheslines again, I just can't help it.)

Thanks to Em, G'ma Jan, and LuAnn for much needed advice and supplies. Leslie, Katie F, and Reneé for learning to quilt with me. Kate and j. for inspiration, fabric and listening to my constant reports on "how the quilt's coming along." Dad, for letting us young quilters take over the house. Mom, for patience and helping me rip out all those damn stitches. And Alex, for loving it with me.

(Can you tell how huge of a project this was for me?)

Red & White

Red & white patterned cotton fabric makes me beyond happy to see, let alone touch. My fingertips want to automatically traces the pattern, as if it were raised or a different texture. Looking at my almost-finished, very first quilt, I could sew with red thread--the red of Valentine bunting--over and over, a pattern, a stitch, the red, white and pink coming together.