The Giftmakers

I wanted to become so many things growing up — a linguist! a swimmer! a meteorologist, once I learned that counted as a career! Not once ever did I include “a seamstress” in the list of aspirations, though my grandmother and mother both mastered this skill, mostly out of necessity.

Summers at my grandmother’s, she wanted me to learn so many homemaker skills, and I credit her and my mother with teaching me to cook, type, garden, and yes, sew. But I didn’t want to sew what they sewed. I tried following clothing patterns but found them tedious and aggravating. The excessive pinning, undo-redo nature of getting a garment just right, that kind of patience is not part of my makeup. I barely have tolerance for hemming, which is about the easiest needlework you can imagine. I am a do-it-wrong-and-fix-later-maybe kind of maker. Even today as I crochet a ridiculous blanket with extra thick chenille “yarn” and a massive crochet hook, I have somehow screwed up the edges and am I pulling out the stitches and redoing those rows? Absolutely not.¹

2013: I started this quilt when I was pregnant with my daughter, cutting and piecing on my kitchen table because I didn't have a sewing room. I finished it 12 years later, hand-sewing the binding at the same kitchen table.

But quilting, once I gained an appreciation for the art and skill of it…now that is a thing I can do. It requires patterns but these are not darts, tucks, “does it hang properly now?” kinds of maneuvers. The kind I like to make involve patterns of repetition, of color theory, of matching points. Once you assemble the tops, you have endless detail options from quilting templates that you can buy at the fabric shop to customized designs if you feel like drawing. Then comes the needlework of making those designs real. My quilting stitches tend to stretch out, beyond what’s considered acceptable in a mature quilter’s stitch size (tiny). At the school where I first taught, the ladies teased me about my inelegant handwork: “you could catch your toe in that stitch!”

Quilting is the cheesiest metaphor for so many family-things and friend-things but its aptness defies rejection. Evidence: the selection of designs and colors; the layering of materials; the careful piecing and quilting, especially if by hand, and often in groups; the finishing. The giving.

Life of Pi quilt. Impossible to see in this image, but I used metallic silver thread to add line-drawings of squid and clouds and schools of fish into the blue corners around the yellow-and-white rafts. Flares, compass rose and waves adorn the edging and center strips. The reverse is a mass of greenery, like Pi’s raft itself.

So why did the ladies² quilt at the school? In tribal communities, giveaways are a common event, and the end-of-year Elders’ Week always featured such a giveaway. So we made star quilts together, sitting in groups around large frames of four 2x4s propped on chairs in the lunch area. First, you safety-pin the quilts to lumber wrapped in old jeans. Then, make a square with the boards and secure them at the corners with C-clamps. Everyone sits around the edges and follows the designer’s quilting lines inward until they can no longer reach. Two sides are designated for rolling, so when the quilters can’t stretch their arms any farther, unpin a few pins, remove the clamps for a moment, and roll the 2x4 under once.

At home I used two frames: one for a standard-size quilt, set up in my basement. Earwigs sometimes made themselves comfortable between the layers — apologies to anyone who’s received a gift quilt from me that included some extra exoskeleton! I also had a small frame made from thinner lumber, which I propped up in my living room for smaller quilts. That basement was chilly! My mother quilts on a hoop, most certainly the more economical in terms of interior real estate, but I find them unwieldy and aggravating.

What about machine-quilting, you ask? Answer: no.

I needed a door for my non-standard wall opening where the laundry is. My grandmother’s black-eyed Susan quilt makes me so happy there.

Currently, on my bed rests a quilt from the turn of the century — the LAST century — perhaps made by my great-grandmother on my father’s side. This quilting thing in my family, it goes way back. They used old dresses and other clothes to piece the tops, and inserted thin batting made of all kinds of materials into the centers. Then they’d back it with something practical, not a whimsical print like the reverse of my Life of Pi quilt.

My mother has also made just-for-show quilts. She got super into art quilts for a long while and transformed her photography, another artistic talent she has, into them. She has cow quilts, truck quilts, quilts featuring giraffes, snow scenes, and more. Yes, the snow quilt is mostly white. She was featured in Quilting Arts magazine for that one!

My mom’s Provençal patio quilt. Won a blue ribbon somewhere, as you can see.

I went into labor with my first baby, my girl, two weeks early, just half a day after sitting cross-legged on the floor, repeatedly leaning forward, while basting together the layers of a quilt. I’ve always thought this quilt-making project pushed her into the world. Born into quilting. Not such a bad way to arrive.

It’s possible this newsletter edition exists just to show off some pretty textile arts. But also, I thought a good deal about the way women carry on, making do and making more with what they have, and passing on that knowledge like gifts. I recently read The Seed Keeper, a gorgeous book by Diane Wilson about a line of Dakota family members who preserved not only their descendants but also their ancestors by carrying forward the seeds, learning how to listen to the earth and the rain, how to heed the sun and the winds. Perhaps I too can preserve the past and give to my children’s children by listening; listening closely to my fingers, to the fabrics that whisper on my skin, to the colors that sing to me.

1. okay maybe I did. But just a few.

2. Occasionally men, but mostly women.