Future memories

Hello, Thursday.

Sadly, I didn't get much done this week in terms of physical quilting.  I did however make major in-roads in the collecting of stuff for the little person on the way.

While I wasn't sewing this week, I was thinking a lot about this space and where I want to go with my quilting adventure.  When we started it was all about one particular quilt for me.  A personal journey through my past facilitated by my old t-shirts.  It was revealing and exciting and at times even intoxicating.  I couldn't stop.  I went on 12 hour binges of piecing.

It was new and it took time. It unearthed memories forgotten and revealed serendipitous moments and connections between personal history and the current life of the material.

This new quilt isn't as exciting right now.  I'm not feeling the same connection to the material.  Maybe because the material is filled with Pete's memories and not mine.  Or maybe because I used the pieces as regular fabric, cutting out patterned pieces and not listening to the fabric itself.  These materials have no meaning for me and it's making the work harder.  Even the upholstery remnants spoke to me more.

I'm also putting off working on this particular quilt because I feel it will be done really quickly.  It needs to be done quickly. I only have two months before the little *bundle of joy* arrives and sitting at the machine is getting more and more difficult the bigger I become.  But something about the time and stages attached to the first quilt made it seem more real.


I took some time to procrastinate and started reading a new book about a quilt exhibition at the V&A a few years ago.  I missed the exhibition at the time.  It was right smack dab in the middle of me finishing my PhD, getting married and then having an early-life crisis (I kid, a little).  As I read the book, I'm kind of glad I missed the exhibition as now I get to read all the research that went into putting the collection together.  The theories about the role of myth in the preservation of quilts and the practicality and luxury of pieced material.  Many of the quilts in the book had no deep significance to the maker at the time of creation.  The significance and myth came after the fact with its use.

Of course.

How could I be so narrow-sighted?  Yes, the first quilt I made was for me.  The materials were meaningful and the journey to a new life was also meaningful, but it was an exercise in recovering the past.  This next one is for a person who only half-exists at the moment.  It's meant to be a starting point, a first.  It's meant to collect meaning along the way (and by 'meaning' I'm thinking commemorative stains of baby's first diaper explosion or first picnic outside, whatever).

And of course, it's not devoid of meaning.  It has traces of both Pete and I, just as the little person it will comfort has traces of us both.  Where is goes with that mix is still a mystery.  For the quilt and the little person.

I've been obsessed with tracking down memories about quilting and stories of the craft and was always thinking of these memories and stories being past tense.  Ignoring all the evidence (wedding quilts, baby quilts, housewarming quilts, guest quilts, etc.) that points to the memory making power of quilts and quilt-making being about the future and all the memories that have yet to be made in conjunction with this bit of blanket.

So I think I have found my mojo with this quilt.   I'm on-board with the materials and the possibility.

Let the piecing begin!