The Girl I Swore I'd Never Be

I started by making quilts.  That was a respectable hobby.  But then came the subsequent, inevitable slide into “quilting,” which is an entirely different designation.  Quilting involves becoming one of a group of people who, among other things, a) take (and eventually teach) lots of sewing classes, b) sniff out quilting stores on every vacation, whether that’s in New England, Paris or Kigali, c) obsessively buy fabric for some as-yet unenvisioned project and d) join the online quilting community.

That last one might be the most dangerous one.  When you start reading blogs, or looking at quilting forums, you effectively turn into a cat lady.  Even though it’s not any more all-consuming than Facebook, Polyvore or Pinterest, it does not carry even the faintest whiff of coolness, except to other quilters.  There is a subset of quilters who are turning out modern, chic, tremendously sophisticated quilts (Haptic Lab, Denyse Schmidt), but to the vast majority of people in the world, if you say "I’m a professional quilter," the only thing that springs to mind is "when I am old I shall wear purple."

There is one moment at which you know you have truly entered the downward spiral.  That is the unfinished object.  The UFO. When I first came across the term, I swore up and down that I would never do that.  One quilt at a time.  Only one project open at once.  I have enough trouble managing my morning ablutions, let alone the anxiety that would descend if I had three, or five, or 14 quilting projects sitting there mocking me.

I did pretty well for a while.  I hand quilt, so it was no small feat to finish something before starting another.  But then I started taking classes, and that was really my downfall.  Because you take a class, and it’s so easy to finish a quilt top in a matter of hours.  And every time, you forget that the quilt top is about 15% of the work of a quilt.

So now I am resolved.  I’m not starting anything new until I finish the hmmanuhhum quilt tops that I have waiting to be finished.  They’re in various stages of construction, but I’ve also resolved to do a little start machine quilting, so hopefully things will go a little faster.

And here's the truth of it: by "descending" into the world of quilting, what I have really done is join an astonishingly proud tradition of (mostly) women who have given shape to an art form over decades and decades.  I am learning from the women who came before me, in the form of my grandmother, who made the quilt I wrapped up in as a baby, a co-worker who inadvertently taught me what I know when she spearheaded the group quilts that accompanied the mini baby boom at my workplace, my mother-in-law, a woman with the eye of a historian and the awe of a collector and even my own mother, who claims not to have any such skills, but who once decided with my father that they were going to make a quilt together.*


If all of those women, with so much less time on their hands and resources at their disposal can finish their quilts, then so can I.

Here's one.  Let's see how long it is before it turns into an FO:

Cherry House's I Do quilt, begun circa 2010

* A few years ago, when I really started getting serious about quilting, I remembered seeing the few blocks that they completed, and I realized what they had attempted.  My recollection, which may be faulty, is that it was a star pattern with at least 12 points.  If I am correct, it would have had to have involved paper-piecing and was not a pattern for the beginner, or the faint of heart.