Piecing Together Scraps

Keeping the ones you like

Good Morning Starlight,

A little over a month ago, I brought my collection of antique sewing machines to be serviced at a small quilt shop about an hour's drive into the Berkshire mountains. When I returned to pick up the century-old Singer beauties, the shop's owners, an older couple, showed me proudly around their collection of quilts. I loved hearing their stories of how they became quilters and how their passion for quilting evolved to bring them into a new career as master quilters and gallerists. 

I have always loved quilts, collected them, read about them, and wanted to make them. 

My COVID Quilt plan

In 2021, when I moved to Martha's Vineyard for the Covid year, I was determined that would be the project, a quilt. I went to the Dumptique, a charming shed near the town dump that collects items to be reused to share with the community. I jammed a bag of scrap fabric, curtains, sheets, and button-downs to repurpose into a quilt. I bought graph paper and began drawing a pattern to scale for a queen bed. Then, I color-coded the drawing, counted the pieces, cut the pieces, washed the pieces, and ironed the pieces. Then, it was time to piece it together. 

I looked at what I had done and thought, this is the ugliest thing, the ugliest fabric, and the most exhausting pleasureless commitment I could have imagined for myself. Not to mention, I did not have my sewing machine with me on the Island, so it would be hand-sewn torture. I bundled everything back in a bag and planned to bring it back to the Dumptique.

While visiting the Quilt Shop, I told the sad story of my one-off attempt to make a patterned quilt and how I had thrown it away. I explained how the process had overwhelmed me.

The woman started telling me how she thought I might enjoy putting batting on a wall and just placing fabric up and moving it around. Yes, I would enjoy that. She went on to say that most quilters aren't artists; they follow patterns and that making a pattern is very hard. I thought about my effort to create a pattern versus follow a pattern. If I'm truthful, I never thought of looking for a pattern to follow. As we talked, she spoke of her students and their processes and how she teaches newbies how to iron their edges down. 

As she spoke, I felt a desire rise like a soft vapor, almost unnoticeable. Could she be my fairy quilt godmother? Could she teach me to quilt? The curiosity was snuffed in a second by a voice that said something along the lines of, "How foolish are you! Anyone can quilt and why would you need to learn to make something you do not need!" 

I took her business card and promised to send her photos of the quilts that took my breath away years earlier. The last works of artist Louise Bourgeois. When I saw Louise's quilt as a full page ad in Art in America, I was a newly identified artist crawling out of a chrysalis and a new mom. I was starting to learn about Louise Bourgeois, as she was my new hero. There were so few recognized mother artists. As a mother artist, I felt as if I couldn't exist and didn't exist in that place, the Art World. I quite literally plugged into my Google search: Artist Mother to try to find someone. Louise popped up along with her mammoth Mamon spiders. 

Louise Bourgeois, “Maman,” bronze and marble.

I did not imagine the soft quilted image in Art in America could be Louise's, but whoever it was made by made me stop and gasp a little. There was something recognizable in it. What? I still cannot tell you. It was a spiral of pink, gold, and black. When I saw Louise's name on it, I was determined to visit the exhibit at a Chelsea Gallery. 

I walked into the gallery and saw Louise’s small hand-sewn quilts lining the walls like colorful tiles. The power of the pieces moved me so much that tears overcame me. I cannot explain or tell you why they were powerful. I asked the gallerist for the title sheet. The one quilted square that brought me there from the pages of Art in America was titled Dawn. I froze. I felt fear. I felt surreal. 

It was a coincidence. Yet, I knew there was a message there for me. It read: You are starting where I am ending. 

Louise Bourgeois, "Untitled, no. 7 of 12, from the portfolio, Dawn", 2006

Early last week, on a lark, I messaged the quilter the images of Louise's quilts and asked if she, perchance, had any openings for a quilting lesson. She replied right away and told me that there was an opening this weekend, which, before I could think of a way not to go, confirmed my attendance. 

This week, I had to clean out the Big-Ol SUV that broke down last week because the tow truck was taking it away Tuesday. Buried under the back seat was the bag that held my colorful quilt-cut-out-to-be. How funny! The timing (how many times will you, my readers, hear me say something about timing?!). I decided to keep my bag of scrapped effort to show the instructor. 

I drove to my quilt lesson with zero expectations of what we would do or how we would do anything. When I arrived, I showed the shop owner my illustration and bag of scraps. She complimented me on my instincts and showed me what would have been the next step, which was to outline the larger blocks in the pattern so they could be pieced together. We pulled out the fabric, and I explained how I thought it was ugly and the pattern was ugly. She said we would only know that to be true once we started. She asked me gently to show her which fabrics I liked and which I didn't. 

Then she made a little pile of the ones I liked, and I saw that once I pulled out the fabrics I didn't like, the remaining pile was somewhat pleasant. Then we started laying them next to each other without a pattern, and she gently showed me how to sew a few together correctly. Next, we fit a few more pieces together. Suddenly, I was painting with fabric. 

Can healing happen with quilting? Crazy Quilt WIP

My quilting lesson this week was less about how to sew correct seams and more about giving myself permission to both not know how to sew accurate seams and ask someone to show me how. It was about allowing myself the care of a fairy quilt godmother and trusting my desire even if I didn't know why I needed to learn to quilt. 

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