I never made a quilt.
I knew just a little bit about quilting from a friend whose mother was a very keen quilter. They had lived in Canada for a couple of years, and I think her interest stemmed from that time. When we arrived in the US, we stayed with a woman for a couple of weeks (a contact of a contact who very kindly opened her home to us) who was a quilting addict. It was a bit of a nightmare, as there were pins, needles and scissors everywhere, and I had a youngest who was two years old (the woman didn't have children). In those early days, I had time to kill in the house during the day. It was both strangely busy (sorting out bank accounts, driving tests, social security numbers, house hunting), and strangely quiet, because there were long spells when I was alone in a strange house, with my three children, knowing no-one and hardly able to go out because the weather was so bad and - as I was horrified to find - you couldn't walk anywhere. So I picked up a book about quilting.
The book was a series of short stories and reflections, and I found myself drawn in. So as the children watched rather a lot of the Disney channel and Nickelodeon and I began my lament for CBBC (a lament which would last five years), I would read short pieces about quilting. I began to understand some of the magic of it. It's not just the sewing, you see. It's the love that goes into the quilt. Women down the years have made quilts for their daughters as they marry, for their sons as they go off to a new city, for a cousin who is ill, for a friend who is bereaved. Quilts are an expression of love, of support, of caring. They are designed with creative excitement, stitched with love, finished with a joyful sense of completion, and given to their recipients as gifts from the heart. This all seemed a little over-the-top and too emotional to my newly-left-Britain ears, but I warmed to it. Perhaps it was the beginning of a new perspective on our famous British reserve and stiff upper lip.
The other aspect of quilting that caught my attention was the community of women it brings together. In the pioneer days, women desperately needed each other's support and practical help, and quilts would be - literally - pieced together from scraps contributed by friends and neighbours. The women would gather together to finish the quilt, filling it and backing it in one long session, that could last all day, all persevering together until the final stitch was done. If I remember rightly, this is called a "quilting bee". One of the stories in the book I read urged non-quilters to go along to one. "You'll find a warm welcome, laughter, and long-lasting friendship", it said. "Experienced quilters love a beginner to take under their wings." Alone in a strange land, that sounded like just what I needed. A ready-made group of older, wiser women, who would pass on their skills, and gather me up. I decided I would make a quilt, and then I'd be able to take it with me when we returned back to Britain, and it would be my American thing, full of American memories.
Reader, I never made that quilt. There was a moment when it came closer, when we moved into our own home, which had a lovely light-filled room that had been the previous occupant's sewing room. But for us, that room needed to become a child's bedroom. Life became busy with other things. I found friendship elsewhere, and I did find my group of older, wiser American women, but in a book club, not a sewing circle.
I enjoyed quilting vicariously through an English friend in Hertfordshire who took it up, and started blogging about it. Reading her blog, I could see how the old values of quilting are being practised in new ways made possible by the internet. Women are exchanging designs and techniques, helping newbies get started, sending each other packages of fabric through the post, enjoying competitions and challenges, and working together on projects. There are blog posts describing joyous real-life meetings of friends who have got to know each other online. The magic of quilting meets the magic of blogging!
Perhaps I will take up quilting when I retire. I'll have a table on which I can leave a sewing machine and half-finished projects, without having to clear them away before dinner-time; there'll be no-one wandering round the house in bare feet (those pins!); I'll have time to stitch away to my heart's content. Perhaps I will design a quilt called "American Memories". Perhaps I really will.
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