Repairing Someone Else's Precious Stitches

It’s been almost a year since I swore I would make blogging a thing again, and the silly thing is that I have also not really posted much on Instagram either. I haven’t been sharing my work the way I should be, and I’ll attribute that mostly to simply needing more quiet in my brain, less busy. And let’s be real, Instagram is not a place for quiet in your brain. It seems like more and more it’s about shouting and noise and I miss how it was way back when, when I got to know your cats and craft projects with crappy lighting. Good times.

But the truth is that I do want to be sharing my work with you all, and I do want you to see my process and progress, so let’s play a little catch-up today (and through the week on Instagram).

For the first half of this year, and part of last year too, I was overwhelmed by quilt repair work. A lovely problem to have, but I never really expected this to be part of what I do, it just sort of happened organically that I took one on here or there. Then last year, I had an enquiry about a stack of antique quilts. Six of them. That job took me a year, and sort of made me into an official quilt repairer.

These six quilts were really special, though an intense challenge that I may, admittedly, not have been fully prepared for. Yikes. Turns out antique textiles are even more fragile than I’d imagined. Some of these quilts (all featured in this post, and later in the week on Instagram) were so fragile that the pressure of my stitches could tear the fabric further. I will think twice about taking on antique quilts again - after all, as I always stress to my clients, I am a repairer of quilts, but not a restoration specialist.

That said, this collection of quilts will be special in my heart forever. The six quilts all belonged to one family, found in a father’s attic after he passed away, and to be distributed to his family members after repairing. It’s not entirely clear who made them, but certainly at least one (pictured below) belonged to my client’s grandfather, because we found his name literally written on it in ink. This is highly unusual, to be inscribed on the front of the quilt like this, and I suspect it was used on travels and thus marked as this man’s property in this way. In fact, this family member left his regular employment to work for the circus (NOT A JOKE! there’s letters to prove it!) and we think this quilt accompanied him on his travels. We named it The Traveling Quilt, and I really hope it saw a lot of America. I bet it has stories to tell.

These quilts were so precious, so beautiful, so delicate - the whole project took me almost exactly a year to complete. I felt badly about that at the time of final delivery, but now that some time has passed, I suppose that’s not a crazy timeline for quilts that may date back over 100 years. I didn’t realize how intense they would be to work on, and that I would need breaks between each one to reset.

In between, I worked on a stunning Amish nine-patch quilt (on Instagram today) and a family treasure (which I sadly did not get great photos of, I’m afraid, which I am disappointed about - photos are always my downfall in a rush to get quilts back to their owners!) … and I also realized that, although I am truly passionate about working on these treasures and preserving women’s work from the past, I was not allowing myself any time for my own work, which has not progressed in some time. Working on the quilts feeds my heart, but seeing my own work put aside breaks it. I simply can’t do both at the same time, there’s not enough brains to go around.

My solution going forward is this: from now on, I will separate the two, rather than trying to balance them. I’ve set aside two two-month periods - one in the Spring, one in the Fall - for repair work. I expect to be able to take on four repairs in each period, and I will work on them all at once, rather than consecutively, which will help me avoid delays for supply orders or waiting for client feedback, etc. I’ll just assume I’ll have your quilts for the full two months and everyone can expect theirs back by the end of the repair period they’ve booked me for.

My first trial of this new method is coming up in September - October 2022, and I have just one slot remaining. (If you have a quilt you’d like repaired, you can find out more about how I work and take on clients here.) I will close the gate on that period around August 20th or so, so that I know exactly what I have on my plate for those two months. The following period will be March - April 2023, which is already open if you’d rather plan for then!

So, more repair process coming up, and new work, erm, in the works as well. Having both moving forward, but not in competition, is a much happier place for my hand-stitching heart.

For Jimmy, And All Who Loved Him

Earlier this summer, I completed this memorial quilt for the family of Jimmy Atchison, to honor both them, and his life.

Jimmy was a victim of police violence, shot and killed (it seems) while scared and hiding from them, and there is a big hanging question on whether he was actually “guilty” in the first place. I would like to spend some time preaching about how this is so incredibly wrong, but honestly, it’s simple: the police are not supposed to kill people. Done.

This young man was a father, and a son, and a nephew, and a friend, and now he is lost, and all of those people are grieving. There is love left behind, but it is cloaked in grief, and nothing can change that now.

So. The Social Justice Sewing Academy, who I have volunteered with for some time, assigned me Jimmy and his family to create a memorial quilt, for their Quilts of Remembrance project. These quilts are created for the families of those lost, to offer them memory, solace, comfort.

To be frank, I really struggled with this project for a long time. How do you honor someone you didn’t know, with only a few facts about their short life? And as an artist, how do you create something that is still you, while being completely for, and about, someone else?

Within the few facts I had to work with, I knew colors that Jimmy loved (red and black), a few of his interests (basketball - specifically, the Lakers - and football), that he had two little babies, and a little peek into his dreams. Jimmy was an aspiring rapper, and had already put out some mix tapes in his hometown of Atlanta. (Add his group-mates to those who will have suffered from his loss.) So I had a few details I could include, but these details alone were not enough to pay tribute to a human life.

I was stuck with a few notions in my head that kept rolling around: first, that I am so interested in the symbolic meanings and names of quilt blocks, and second, that this quilt should honor both Jimmy and the people who lost him.

Working with a strict red-and-black palette, and a few themed fabrics thrown in for detail, I settled on a bold repeating design, a minimalist grid style I love to work with, and a traditional block called King’s Crown. To those who loved him, and mourn him, Jimmy will be remembered as a King in their hearts. When I came across it, I knew it was the one.

While the blocks themselves were perhaps my tribute to Jimmy (and the photos, which I had printed by Spoonflower), the border text* is my message to his family, friends, and children. They loved him, and this is my way of sending my love to them. A stranger, but one who has felt the pain of grief and knows how comforting the warmth of a quilt can be through that time.

All of this is for Jimmy, and all who loved him. My heart is with you.

* for the quilters out there, the foundation pieced alphabet I used is this one by AmararCreacions, and I can’t recommend it enough.

From within the trees.

This is the largest hanging I've made so far. And I’m INTO it. 60 inches wide and 30 inches tall. I love working large, turns out. Some of that is a practical thing, because sewing one facing or one hanging sleeve (the more boring parts of my process) is just way less of a bummer than sewing lots of them. Truth.

But you can’t deny that things that are small and things that are huge are just that much better than averagely-sized things. There’s always something appealing about sizing that is unexpected, or unconventional. If I think about it, it’s something I always want to play with. I have dreams of printmaking, which constantly stall on me, and they always involve prints that are either really tiny, or impossibly large (though perhaps printing something of any damn size would be a good place to start).

Anyway, this wall hanging was commissioned for over a bed, and my brief had to do with greens and upright rectangles representing trees. I couldn’t initially find a way to create movement in that, but knew it was necessary - too stagnant and there would be no sense of growth and flow that a living, breathing thing should definitely have.

It was the image of a soundwave that made me understand how it would work. Using the flying geese (darker triangles) for growth, the arrangement of the rectangles for movement, and my hand-stitched quilting for depth. I genuinely feel like this is the best thing I’ve ever made.

This one has also given me a lot of food for thought about working larger, and with working with an overlay of hand-stitching to create more depth. I never once thought of the background and foreground of a design in quilting - though that’s something we think about in embroidery all the time. I’ve often felt like something was missing in my sketches, and once I doodled those larger triangles floating over the trees like an echo, I knew that something big just happened.

My customer has received the quilt and hopefully will share photos when it’s hung in its new home, and we have already discussed companion pieces for other rooms. But for now, it’s time for me to take a break. The last time I took time off, a week I felt absolutely desperate for at the time, we had a pandemic instead (aka March 2020), and the last time I had actual time off to rest for real was in August 2019. That’s true for so many of us, I’m hardly unusual in that way - but dang, I am tired. I’m giving myself August off from commissions* - with time to sketch and plan for the holiday season and, you know, play hours and hours of Nintendo in the delicious August warmth.

*I’ll open commissions up again in September, with an eye to taking any custom orders for holiday gifts as early as I can. So have a think on it, and email me on September 1st if you have anything you’d like to gift to your favorite quilt fan.

I think it's time for blogs to make a comeback.

As instagram heads further into video content, I will find it harder and harder to use that tool to express myself and share my work and views. And I have a lot to say. Here’s to the return of the blog, and hoping there are more like me out there. Coming soon.