Quilt No. 91
March 2013
It’s been over fifty
years since my grandmother died, and I’m not sure if I remember her face or if
it’s just the photos of her that have planted themselves in my memories. I was six years old at the time. Some memories are clear – the green canvas
hammock stretched between the poplar trees in the “park” at the side of her
house. There was an old enamel stove
abandoned on the walkway that led to the outhouse, a rock garden, a rain
barrel, a pump house, and a hen house sheltering beady-eyed chickens who might peck
me to death...or not. She always wore a
dress. Probably what I remember the best is the fabric of those dresses.
I’ve thought about her
a lot over the years. We shared, well
almost shared, a lot of interests – things like playing the piano and
quilting. A quilt top that she had
completed but never had a chance to make into a finished quilt was eventually
passed on to me, the only quilter in the family. Many
years ago I sandwiched her quilt top with batting and backing and tried to
quilt it. It was my very first attempt
at finishing a large quilt and I didn’t get very far with it. I packed my botched attempt away in a box for
over twenty years while I thought about what I should do with it.
I finally rescued it a
few years ago...and I still didn’t know what
to do with it. I had to be brutal with
myself and admit that maybe, just maybe, there was the tiniest chance that I
didn’t like it as a whole. Its rows of
diamond blocks were separated by a pale green fabric and the two just weren’t
happy together. But it contained so many
pieces of fabric that I loved with fervent and rabid nostalgia that I did not
want to do any harm. I removed my pitifully
amateur quilting stitches – there weren’t too many. I tossed out and the batting and the backing. I even washed the quilt which had become a
tad shop worn without having done a single day’s duty, kind of like Prince
Charles passing into retirement while still waiting to start his first
job.
I decided that the
green fabric was the quilt’s nemesis, holding all the clambering 1940s and ‘50s
fabrics at a metaphoric gunpoint. It
took me another year to get up the courage to remove the green fabric, reducing
the quilt to long strips of diamond blocks sewn together. Now I was free to create some smaller quilts
that family members who were closest to Gramma could enjoy.
I started re-piecing
portions of the strips together, repairing frayed fabrics, re-enforcing bits
and pieces here and there. I purchased
some new fabric that had a vintage look to it and used it as the backing. Each time I ran into a technical problem I
would think about the question in my head at bedtime and wish I could “channel”
my grandmother for an answer. And each
morning I would have a solution to my problem.
Eventually I completed
a small quilt for my cousin that could be used as a lap quilt, or a wall
hanging, or perhaps as a decorative element on a table.
The best part
of re-working this quilt was how I got to “know” my grandmother. I came to understand more fully what quilting
was originally all about. As modern
quilters we amass giant stashes of fabric, some of which it is altogether
possible we will never use. As I became acquainted with each fabric in
Gramma’s quilt, I recognized the leaner times of post World War II. Every kind of fabric had been used. I recognized the scrap pieces from her dresses
and from my dresses, and some pieces from a covered cushion. Other pieces were probably from my
grandfather’s shirts. A few pieces
matched a doll blankets that been made for me. No doubt some larger, more
important garment had been gracious enough to leave a few extra scraps for a
blanket to keep a cherished doll warm. The best pieces of all were from a grey silky
dress I wore at age three. There’s a
studio photograph of me happily posing in that lovely dress. The fabric I remember most vividly is the
one with the blue background covered in tiny red and yellow diamonds. This thin cotton fabric was left over from a homemade comforter. This was the
blanket, filled with down and fine chicken feathers, that my mother would pull
out when one of us was shaking with chills and fever. It made magical healing powers, which I suspect
have been retained by the fabric bits in Gramma’s quilt.
Working on the quilt
helped me think about my grandmother from an adult perspective, so different
from that of a child. She was a cook at
a Hydro power plant. She and my mother produced three substantial meals a day
for the men who worked there – seven days a week, through war time and
rationing. How privileged my life seems
in comparison as I take twenty seconds to brew coffee in my Keurig and heat up
my bagel in the microwave. And how warm
and familiar it seems as I bend over Gramma’s fabric, using my modern electronic
sewing machine, finally bringing to life
what she never had the chance to finish.
