Pieces of Life Stitched Together

I believe that quilting is a fitting representation for the human experience. Each piece, as with each experience, is fit together to form a whole. The stitches are carefully measured, each sewn while experiencing life events around the particular piece it represents. When a part of the quilt is torn, such as when a loved one dies, or we're torn apart by illness or neglect, that piece of our heart and life is patched up and sewn into the new fabric that makes up our existence. I've had this theory about quilting and life since I was in my teens, though I never formally learned how to quilt.

When my daughter was born prematurely I was in the midst of trying my hand at crochet. Loop, loop, pull through, and loop, loop, pull through. Over and over again I would repeat this mantra as I lay in bed trying to get the hang of crocheting a baby blanket while on doctor-ordered complete bed rest. Loop, loop, pull through. It did not end well. The resulting baby blanket looked like a badly-shaped parallelogram and the hours spent in repetition of the loop, loop, pull through technique did little to foster my personal creativity - the result was a stunningly staid piece of lumpy and drab fabric my daughter could poke her tiny fingers through while screaming of her dissatisfaction with being born too early and highly sensitive to this whole “life” thing.

One day as I cradled my infant daughter, trying to imagine what her life would become, I thought about the quilts I'd witnessed being made while growing up. It seemed so simple to pick out pieces of fabric and sew them together. I did not count on how complex the process was: which values I would select, how I would fit them together, and what my overall pattern would be. In the end I approached my first quilt much the same way I approached life - haphazardly - and learning as I went. The result was a miraculous blend of brightly-colored pieces of cut fabric not quite fitting together perfectly but conveying joy and forming a serviceable blanket that has seen my daughter through childhood, the loss of her father, a tornado ripping apart our home, a pandemic, the loss of our closest family friend to COVID, and now college.

Over the years since making that first quilt I have learned many more facets of quilting. I've learned the difference between a running stitch and embroidery stitch, how different values of fabric achieve different results, what a pattern is and how you don't always need one, and why it's incredibly helpful to have a teacher and guide when learning something new. During this time I've also lived through the pain of loss of family members, the agony of betrayal, the sheer joy of finding love, the determination needed to find myself, and the similarities to ripping out the stitches of a sewn-in piece with a finely-sharpened pair of scissors as well as snipping the meticulously-placed stiches of intergenerational trauma.

Today my daughter registered for her Fall Semester classes in college and I am working on a quilt for myself. I've made many quilts over the intervening years from her birth through now, but most of them have found homes with other people who could use and love them. I have the memories of making each one and that has satisfied me. Does my new quilt have a pattern? No, it does not. I am trying my hand at an old type of quilting called "Crazy Quilting" in which I'm gathering pieces leftover from the years past and figuring out how best to sew them together. Some pieces need a slight clip here or there to trim them into place, some pieces need a little extra TLC before placing them in the blanket top. Much like my ancestors and experiences over the years have shaped who I am now, this quilt will be a reflection of the other quilts that have come before.

Quilting and life are synonymous with small pieces making up a larger whole. I am excited to see what these creations will look like when I'm finished.