The Something for the Someone

I'm back! From the wedding! And the project that took me so many nights and naptimes that I'd disappeared entirely from the Interwebz. Have you been losing sleep over what it was? Have you been pacing the floor, wondering, what could be so important that she, previously so dedicated and consistent and prolific, could suddenly just disappear for months? And then you stop, angry, pounding your fist into your hand, crying, NOTHING COULD BE SO IMPORTANT!!

Well, I've got three words for you: Dead Mom's Quilt.*

See? See how I immediately play the Dead Mom card, thus neutralizing any impatience you might have felt? Hey, the gig is crummy, I gotta take the perks where I can get 'em.

Anyway, what I was spending literally every free moment on for the last several weeks (and many other moments on prior to August) was a quilt for my sister as a wedding/housewarming present. But not just any quilt, you see...several years ago my mom had decided she would make a quilt. My mom was an experienced seamstress, but hadn't quilted before. But, being who she was, this neither intimidated nor bothered her. My mom had a way of doing things, and that way was always, to quote Jamie Buchman, whole-assed. So, while you or I might say, "Gee, I've never made a quilt. I guess I should start with something simple," Mom would say, "Well, if you're going to make a quilt, MAKE a QUILT."

A Very Short Primer on Quilts That Will Provide a Frame of Reference: Quilts are basically blocks of fabric, sewn together. The simplest way to do this is to have x number of squares sewn in rows. More complicated is to sew together other shapes to make up larger blocks that then get sewn together. Then you get into the patterns and such. If you want to be very complicated, you take zillions of teeny tiny squares of fabric and arrange them by color, making an Impressionist, watercolor mosaic effect. Guess which way Mom went? Right. So I inherited two box lids of teeny tiny squares of floral fabric, sorted out into color families, arranged in tidy piles. Along with these were two books about watercolor quilts, and a pad of graph paper. So I thought to myself, I will finish my dead mother's quilt! I will continue her legacy!

Then I realized that Mom's true legacy was this: Mom liked to start projects. She always began them with gusto (and a full set of expensive supplies), but then she got busy. Or got distracted. Or, got cancer. So what I found was no pages marked in the books, nothing but a packing list on the graph paper, and no real clue as to what her quilty dream might have been. So, a lovely friend who knows quilts helped me pick out a pattern, and instead of Finishing My Dead Mother's Quilt, I settled for Making a Quilt Out of Fabric Chosen, Cut, and Arranged And Then Put In the Basement By My Dead Mother.

So (and yes, I realize it's daring, nay, outrageous to assume that, having not posted in weeks, I'm assuming that what you'd really like to read about is a sewing project that has already taken place), I sewed and sewed and sewed, and ironed and cut and ripped seams and counted and sewed some more. During naptimes on weekends, and each evening after Tankbaby went to bed, I would set up my ironing board, put the sewing machine on top of the dishwasher, pull out scissors, pins, and rulers, and work. I watched (well, listened to) countless episodes of The Daily Show, Louie, and Lie to Me, courtesy of Hulu.com. MOTH would go off to bed, pleading exhaustion, and I would whimper with envy. Sixty, ninety minutes at a time, before I'd pack everything up again (have I mentioned that my sewing studio is also my kitchen?) and trudge off to bed, hoping that tonight would not be one of the nights that Tankbaby decided to check in at 3 AM just to see if I was serious about that whole no-milk-between-10-and-6 thing.

Somewhere in here I also worked a whole bunch, started teaching another course of my parenting class, got eight inches of hair cut off (which all of five people noticed, as I started with approximately twelve feet of hair), bought a dress for the wedding, bought a bra for the dress that didn't actually work with the dress, and begged with Tankbaby to please, please, please learn to say "mama." (He's got a few words, like "dada" and "zebra," all the important ones.)

But I did it. Two days before we left, I finished the binding (the part that goes around the outside of the whole quilt and has to be hand-sewed), packed it into the top of my carry-on suitcase, and had a whole extra day free to really freak out about flying alone with a toddler.

I gave it to my sister the night before the wedding. She's going to put it in the front room of her new house, draped over the wooden rocking chair that we grew up with. I think she was appropriately moved, and I made her promise to use it and wear it out. I have fantasies of Tankbaby--as a Tankkiddo--coming to visit and curling up under the quilt and finding the three cat faces among all the flowers (WTF, Mom?) and running his fingers over the seams and knowing that Mama made this quilt for Aunt Benevola.

The cool part is that, the day before the wedding, my aunt came up for breakfast. I showed her the quilt and she told me that she thought my mom had also pulled fabric from my grandmother's stash to incorporate into the quilt. So you got your dead mom, you got your sister's wedding, and now you got the whole three-generations thing. Not too shabby, eh?

So, assuming you're still reading this and even politely feigning interest, here's the finished product. I'm really really pleased with how it turned out, although during one particularly long evening of seam-ripping, I will admit to shouting, "Screw it! We're getting her a fondue pot!"








*If you just muttered to yourself, "I used to play bass for Dead Mom's Quilt," then we are BFF. Or possibly, you're my dad. Hi, Dad!