My friend Carol gave me a very worn, but beautifully stitched antique quilt years ago. The quilt top, in a deep pink calico print and a matching calico in brown, was shattered from exposure to sunlight— but the backside was in great shape and clearly showcased the tiny stitches of an unknown maker.
Almost the entire quilt was used to make three large, garment-like pieces that are part of my Apron Strings series. Because the top side (in the Orange Peel pattern) was in such bad shape, I lined each piece with a linen backing, and appliqued the “apron strings” onto the whole thing. Then I added lots more improvisational stitching, and a few lovely little tassels. Pink is not my go-to color, but it seemed to work for a series focused on mothering and looked great against some black and navy areas. The garment shapes worked better for me than a couple of earlier rectangular quilts.
The idea of some unknown woman’s tiny regular stitches, so carefully and expertly sewn, juxtaposed with my own larger, more irregular stitches, appealed to my sense of connection to our textile past. Meditative layers of slow stitch.
Today I am thinking with anguish about the mothers and families who lost children to a school shooting yesterday. It is hard to take in that kind of overwhelming grief and despair. And yet it happens again and again. How can we not despair about that.
Reading List:
Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam; Gods of Howl Mountain, by Taylor Brown; The Secret Place, by Tana French and Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. Johns Mandel.