This week I’ve been busy with all the normal things that crowd our modern day lives: dentist’s appointments for the kids, grocery shopping, cleaning the house and paying my bills.  While performing many of these seemingly mindless tasks, my mind has wandered to an article I read earlier this week in my favorite quilting magazine, American Patchwork & Quilting.  On the very first page, a reader had sent in an email explaining why she loved quilting so much, and it made me reflect on why I love it so much.  I am a creative person and need an outlet for that, but I think it boils down to something deeper than that, something that harkens back to the more primitive needs in all of us.  I quilt to express my love for the people around me in a very tangible way. 

I think back to my first true quilt, which I started my senior year of high school.  I found a picture in a Spiegel catalog that sparked it all.  A beautifully constructed quilt, with lots of graphic punch and very pronounced color pattern that really intrigued me was artfully draped across a bed, with lots of beautiful plump pillows and heirloom sheets setting off the ensemble.  I stared at that picture for hours, trying to figure out what the pattern entailed.  I eventually snagged a piece of graph paper from my mom’s desk in the family room, and began sketching it out.  I drew the patchwork pieces carefully, and actually did it in a couple of different sizes, gauging what would be easier to do. 

I took a trip to my Grandma’s basement, and raided her revered fabric room, searching out the perfect colors to complement my pattern.  Luckily for me, my grandma had the largest stash known to woman -kind, and it didn’t take any time at all to find the twelve different fabrics I needed to complete the pattern, according to the now crumpled picture.

Finally, I began the tedious task of pinning my homemade pattern onto the fabric I had painstakingly chosen, and cutting out each individual piece with scissors.  I had never hear d of rotary cutters, rulers or mats, so my only choice was to use my mom’s regular sewing scissors or else her pinking shears.  I wisely chose the regular shears and got to work.  After a short period of time, I deduced that there had to be a better way to cut out all these millions (or so it seemed to me) of small pieces.  I began stacking the fabric six deep and cutting them out that way.  This is how I finished off the quilt, with my impatience showing up in the pattern later on because the pieces got bigger as I cut through more fabric at a quicker pace. 

Next began the tedious construction process.  I still had no idea what I was doing, but I had seen some beautiful quilts at my grandmother’s house, made by her mother, so I figured I had it in my blood and it would come to me.  And I guess it did, slowly, over time: lots and lots of time.  I spent spare moments here and there throughout my senior year of high school constructing that quilt.  All the patchwork pieces were kept neatly tucked away in a hatbox my brother had given me the previous Christmas.  I would pull out the necessary pieces as I went along, my goal to complete one block at each sewing session.  As the year wore one, I even sewed part of the blocks together with my mom’s serger, which of course experienced technical difficulties with the tension so you can see, rather clearly, the bright white thread peaking through the seams. 

Near the end of the school year, I finished all the blocks, and by the end of the summer I had them sewn together, completing my first quilt top.  It ended up rather lopsided because of the issues with cutting out the pieces, and through a little research I discovered I had made a log cabin quilt, not exactly your easiest pattern for beginners.  Now at this time, that meant nothing to me other than I hadn’t made something totally original, but as time has gone on, I’ve appreciated how totally ignorant I was about what I was doing at the outset of the project. 

I borrowed a hand quilting frame and started on that phase of the project.  I’d always just tied quilts with long strings of bulky yarn before. These precious samples weren’t even really “quilts”, because they were really just two flat sheets with a nice fluffy bat in the middle.  The small and tidy stitches I’d seen on those quilts of my great-grandmother’s were what I wanted for this project.  I started out with large sloppy stitches, doing the basic stitch-in-the-ditch to emphasize my fabulous sewing skills.  This part of the project dragged on for another year as I mastered how to use thimble and rocking my needle just so to create even stitches.  I didn’t finish until the following summer, when I was home from college for my summer break.  After I finally got it off the frame, my mom turned the edges and finished it for me.  And that was that, it was all done.  The quilt resided on my bed while I was away at college, and when I got married it moved onto a shelf in the closet.  I started quilting seriously about 6 years ago, when I quit my job to stay at home with my first child.  The more I do now, the more I realize what I was really beginning with that first quilting project. 

Now, looking back at that first project, with its warpy-folksy look (which was not my intention!)  I understand a bit more about what I was trying to accomplish. The underlying need to create these material statements, which my husband often points out are “just perfectly good fabric, cut up and then sewn back together again”.   I’ve used these to search for a way to connect to my grandmother and the wonderful tradition that had been passed down to her from her mother.  As I look at that quilt, I still feel a real connection to my grandmother, even though she passed on almost 10 years ago.  I feel the love from my mother, who finished the project for me that lived in her basement for two years.  I feel the admiration from my sister, who was so proud of what I had done, and still to this day, passes along every compliment she gets on quilt or a bag that I’ve made for her.  And as I make new friends through this hobby of mine, I get the opportunity to pass on this outlet for sharing love.  It’s my ultimate connection to those I love, my way of wrapping them up in my love, and reflecting on the love they’ve shown me.