Part 1
I am in the midst of a deep depression that feels like grief. There are several stories that have brought me to this grief /depression, but this post is not about those failures and losses and abrupt and unhappy events. This is about seconds of clarity in the confusion. There is a part of me that wants to get better. I cannot always hear her - the noise in my head is too loud, but sometimes her whisper is louder.
Early in this spiral downward, due to the events of those days, I had time and time and time on my hands and an inability to sit still or to sleep or to focus. In my restlessness I began cleaning my house, and in cleaning my house I found stuff, stuff I had stuffed away out of sight, stuff that had once been important to me. Fabric. I took it all out. I spread it on the table.I gazed at it. I imagined ways to use it. I felt the glow and comfort of it. And I felt a little better, just a little, just a tiny bit better. I could breathe a little.
In one drawer I came upon a small quilt top - the quilt top I had pieced for my youngest child, her baby quilt. Youngest child is now 19 years old, and I never finished her quilt. I asked her if she still wanted it. I spread it out on the table and we looked at it. It was sweeter, and cuter, than I remembered it. My recollection was that I hadn't been happy with it, that I had thought it garish and cluttered, and maybe that's why I put it away unfinished. But we both admired it, its sweet little lopsided hearts, it's bright colors, the blanket stitching, and she said, yes, she still wanted it. So I layered it with batting and backing and began quilting.
There were hours, oh, long hours, when I lay on the couch in a stupor, and I wondered - what am I doing here? Here meaning, being alive. (I'm trying not to sound trite or cheesy, or overly dramatic; unless you've experienced depression first hand, it's nearly impossible to convey how it feels, although Ally of Hyperbole and a Half does a pretty good job in her post "Adventures in Depression.") But then someone whispered in my brain: You can't leave, you haven't put the binding on yet. And I dragged myself into an upright position and staggered into the other room and looked at the little quilt. Hmmm. What kind of binding should I make? And I started digging in the fabric stash, imagining, folding, layering.
I haven't bound the quilt yet. I'm afraid that when it's done, I will be too.
Part 2
Each morning I make my bed. Making my bed is a loved and lovely habit. The familiar feels and tugs and pats of tidying sheets and pillows and comforters and quilts is soothing to me. Taking a tumble and ruckus of bedclothes and making them neat and inviting is such a pleasure. I always take a moment to step back and look at my bed, at the sunlight glowing through the curtains, the picture it makes, of coziness, of home. My house, you should know, is sort of a nightmare - no walls, just insulation and plastic, jagged lath and brokenness, battered floors, unfinished wood, stained and charred by fire. Outside and inside, it's a pit But I have a few little spaces where I can rest my eyes and see a kind of hard-earned beauty and order that comforts me. My bed and the quilts layered upon it.
As I was making my bed this morning I looked closely at one of the quilts my mother had given me. This is not a quilt passed down in my family, my mother worked auctions, and this was an auction quilt that no one wanted. It was in poor condition, not very pretty, not worth much.
It may have been pieced in the 20s or 30s or 40s, or even the 50s. It is both homely and homey. The materials are not beautiful. They don't always match. The quilting is the kind my grandmother used to do in the old days, just rows of arcing lines. But the backing and batting are polyester. So I think it was quilted long after it was pieced, but the quilting is old-fashioned and simple.
In the quilts I see today there is such an effort toward perfection. Corners meet, colors blend and match or complement each other. Even when patterned or colored fabrics clash, it's purposeful and the whole look is artful. And the quilting, most of it done by machine now, is intricate and detailed. Not so much with this little bow-tie quilt.
And the prints. Oh my. Years ago I bought some 1930's reproduction fabric swatches. I loved those fat quarters! But as charming and quirky as they were, none of them compare to this particular piece of fabric. Wherever would you find another bolt of fabric with this print?
As I made the bed I smoothed the quilt and noticed all the raw spots, where the fabric was worn away to nothing. Some entire blocks are nearly gone. I stroked the scratchy polyester batting, I fingered the slick poly/cotton blend backing. I wrinkled my nose. You could heal this quilt. There is an art to repairing old quilts. You wouldn't do it at all with a museum quality quilt, it would damage the integrity of an historic piece, but with this little unloved, scraggly, rejected, elderly quilt, I could tenderly and lovingly mend and patch the broken places. And in the process maybe I could heal myself.
I am in the midst of a deep depression that feels like grief. There are several stories that have brought me to this grief /depression, but this post is not about those failures and losses and abrupt and unhappy events. This is about seconds of clarity in the confusion. There is a part of me that wants to get better. I cannot always hear her - the noise in my head is too loud, but sometimes her whisper is louder.
Early in this spiral downward, due to the events of those days, I had time and time and time on my hands and an inability to sit still or to sleep or to focus. In my restlessness I began cleaning my house, and in cleaning my house I found stuff, stuff I had stuffed away out of sight, stuff that had once been important to me. Fabric. I took it all out. I spread it on the table.I gazed at it. I imagined ways to use it. I felt the glow and comfort of it. And I felt a little better, just a little, just a tiny bit better. I could breathe a little.
In one drawer I came upon a small quilt top - the quilt top I had pieced for my youngest child, her baby quilt. Youngest child is now 19 years old, and I never finished her quilt. I asked her if she still wanted it. I spread it out on the table and we looked at it. It was sweeter, and cuter, than I remembered it. My recollection was that I hadn't been happy with it, that I had thought it garish and cluttered, and maybe that's why I put it away unfinished. But we both admired it, its sweet little lopsided hearts, it's bright colors, the blanket stitching, and she said, yes, she still wanted it. So I layered it with batting and backing and began quilting.
There were hours, oh, long hours, when I lay on the couch in a stupor, and I wondered - what am I doing here? Here meaning, being alive. (I'm trying not to sound trite or cheesy, or overly dramatic; unless you've experienced depression first hand, it's nearly impossible to convey how it feels, although Ally of Hyperbole and a Half does a pretty good job in her post "Adventures in Depression.") But then someone whispered in my brain: You can't leave, you haven't put the binding on yet. And I dragged myself into an upright position and staggered into the other room and looked at the little quilt. Hmmm. What kind of binding should I make? And I started digging in the fabric stash, imagining, folding, layering.
I haven't bound the quilt yet. I'm afraid that when it's done, I will be too.
Part 2
Each morning I make my bed. Making my bed is a loved and lovely habit. The familiar feels and tugs and pats of tidying sheets and pillows and comforters and quilts is soothing to me. Taking a tumble and ruckus of bedclothes and making them neat and inviting is such a pleasure. I always take a moment to step back and look at my bed, at the sunlight glowing through the curtains, the picture it makes, of coziness, of home. My house, you should know, is sort of a nightmare - no walls, just insulation and plastic, jagged lath and brokenness, battered floors, unfinished wood, stained and charred by fire. Outside and inside, it's a pit But I have a few little spaces where I can rest my eyes and see a kind of hard-earned beauty and order that comforts me. My bed and the quilts layered upon it.
As I was making my bed this morning I looked closely at one of the quilts my mother had given me. This is not a quilt passed down in my family, my mother worked auctions, and this was an auction quilt that no one wanted. It was in poor condition, not very pretty, not worth much.
It may have been pieced in the 20s or 30s or 40s, or even the 50s. It is both homely and homey. The materials are not beautiful. They don't always match. The quilting is the kind my grandmother used to do in the old days, just rows of arcing lines. But the backing and batting are polyester. So I think it was quilted long after it was pieced, but the quilting is old-fashioned and simple.
And the prints. Oh my. Years ago I bought some 1930's reproduction fabric swatches. I loved those fat quarters! But as charming and quirky as they were, none of them compare to this particular piece of fabric. Wherever would you find another bolt of fabric with this print?
