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To Make, To Change: The procession of slow craft

Quilting provides an outlet for nostalgia and growth

By Kait LeiningerPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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The contents of my quilt box all laid out.

My Grandma was a Da Vinci of Home Ec and related arts. She cooked, she painted, she made porcelain dolls, she quilted, and she taught. I looked up to her immensely. I wanted to be able to do all the things she could do, and I wanted to have all the things that she had. An entire room for sewing, a cupboard full of paints, a house full of crafts and knick knacks and treasures; I felt like she had the resources and ability to create anything she wanted, and that thrilled me. Every summer she would get in the car and drive two hours to help my siblings and I create our own sewing projects. One of those summers, when I was nine or ten, I made my first quilt. A lap sized quilt that I dreamed up all by myself. I was so excited about it! I found some fabric that looked like a wooden fence and I had a vision! I was going to make a quilt with a dog in front of a fence that said “Who let the dogs out?” I loved making that quilt, choosing the accent fabrics, sitting beside my grandma learning how to topstitch around the letters I had painstakingly traced and cut out, and then finally, after grandma had left to go home, hand sewing the final side of the binding. At this point I had no understanding of the context behind the song. I thought it was actually about dogs, and that therefore my quilt was really quite clever.

It only took a few whispers for me to realize that I was mistaken. I didn’t understand the song at all! That feeling of not getting it made me really embarrassed. I felt left out and ignorant. I hated not being big enough or mature enough to understand. So I folded my quilt up and hid it in the back of my closet for the next 15 years. This experience didn’t extinguish my aptitude toward cultivating my own brand of renaissance woman, but it did lead me away from fiber crafts. That is until last summer.

I know that the pandemic was difficult for most, and I am sure that I had it pretty easy compared to many. However, I did lose my job and with it most sense of direction and stability. With so much new space and time in my life I picked up a lot of new hobbies. From quintessentials such as sourdough and other ferments, to the more obscure like trying and rating every available type of Lindt truffle (the matcha is unsurprisingly very good), I filled my spring and early summer with as many distractions as I could handle. One of those distractions was stumbling headfirst into the sewing side of Instagram. There I found an open and accepting community full of supportive and creative people. I started looking for ways to incorporate more sewing into my life. I began by mending. I patched the elbows of my favorite flannel and the inside thighs of a couple pairs of pants. Then I wove embroidery thread patches over the torn cuffs of my jean jacket. After completing all of my mending I realized that to continue I really needed to obtain fabric. So I started to search facebook marketplace where I found a bag of fabric scraps for two dollars. I didn’t necessarily have a plan for them, but I did have a vague idea that I could maybe use them for a quilt someday. A quilt felt like a big undertaking though, one that I probably needed a sewing machine for, so I put that project aside for a little while. A few months later I learned about English Paper Piecing (EPP) from a tiktok. It was perfect! Fiddly, time-consuming, portable, no need for specialized equipment, EPP was where I wanted to restart my quilting journey.

English Paper Piecing is a technique where small pieces of fabric are basted around an even smaller piece of paper. The paper provides shape and stability to the fabric. This basting can either be done with thread and needle, or good old craft glue. The pieces of paper can be any shape or series of shapes as long as they can all fit together somehow. Hexagons are a very popular choice because they fit together endlessly. After basting together a small pile of paper/fabric shapes it is time to begin sewing them together. If you keep repeating these steps eventually you will end up with a quilt top.

For my EPP quilt I choose hexagons with ¾ inch sides because that is what worked best with my fabric scraps. So I got out my bag of fabric scraps, printed out a hexagon template and started cutting. I quickly realized that maybe there was a necessary piece of specialized equipment. After cutting out around 50 misshapen hexagons it became clear that a hexagon paper puncher would revolutionize this process. Thankfully they are not too hard to find. The paper puncher was the last tool I really needed before it was time to get down to business. I had my heavyweight paper, my paper puncher, my paper scissors, my fabric scraps, my fabric scissors, my glue stick, my needle, my thread, and my thread scissors. Now that may seem like a lot of stuff, but in reality it can all fit inside one medium sized cardboard box, and I don’t even need all of it at once, so I am ready to work on this anywhere. And I have been. I take a few shapes and my needle/thread/scissors combo with me whenever I go to a movie night, or go on a car ride, or spend some time at a local park .

I’ve been working on this quilt for seven or eight months now and I am still eager to get it out any chance I have. I will sit and sew until my fingers are stiff and raw without even realizing the passing of time. Partly because it is so meditative. Once I get into the rhythm my attention focuses and the repetitive motions calm me. Partly because it provides a much needed outlet. One that doesn’t require a lot of pressing creative decisionmaking, but instead allows me to clear my mind and emotions. After a few hours of working on my quilt I always feel lighter.

In terms of mastering this craft I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go. For example, I have been using a pretty small whip stitch to connect the pieces together. Whip stitch is not always the most highly recommended stitch for EPP because it can be pretty visible on the top side, but it is the one I am most comfortable with. Eventually I would really like to learn how to make a ladder stitch look the way it’s supposed to (i.e. invisible), but I have yet to succeed at that. I’ll also need to learn how to fill, quilt, and bind my quilt. Three skills that I’m sure will take significant effort and research to become proficient at, work that I gladly anticipate!

In the years since I made my first dog themed quilt I have created a lot of stuff. I’ve done painting and pottery and flower petal collage. You name it and I’ve probably at least considered getting into it. All of those years helped instill in me a love of creation. Of having an idea and seeing it come to fruition. These years have also taught me how to be resilient and flexible. How to delight in every aspect of the process because then I will have fun the whole time. If I’m unsatisfied with the end product at least I didn't waste my time or materials. I instead spent them on development of craft, on meditation, on something I love.

I love working on this quilt. I am entranced by the process not in spite of the monotony but because of it. Watching the slow growth of something beautiful out of the marriage between a bag of debris and the work of my hands is so satisfying. I think this is something that my grandmother understood. I have my own cupboard of paints now, and my own house full of knick knacks and treasures, but I’ve realized that the finished product is really not the point. Instead it’s how each finished work came to be that entrances me. The story held in each piece gives so much more meaning to the piece than it could ever have on its own. I treasure the process for the same reason I believe my grandma did, because it is through the process that we enact and experience change.

My first quilt, I am no longer ashamed of it. I do think it is pretty funny though.
Triangles ready to be sewn together.

The biggest combined section so far.

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