Quilts have stories and traditions, and it's the duty of the quilt maker to pass them on along with the quilt. In last week's entry, I told you about the corn patch that goes into the quilts I make for folks who reside outside of Iowa. If you recall, I mentioned using corn fabric in the label of my quilt that went to Ireland.
I didn't start doing the corn-patch thing right off the bat. It developed quite by accident -- I found some fabric with ears of corn on it on a sale table. The idea just shot through me -- chaa-ah, let's remember that we are from the Tall Corn State, for crying in the night, so a new tradition was born. I have since found several fabrics that have ears of corn printed on them, and I will add a yard to my collection when I see a new print.
Quilt people are precious earthlings. The word must have gotten around about my corn fabric fetish, and one day a very sweet fellow guild member called to say she had a surprise for me. Discovering I was at home, she dropped by with a yard of fabric she had found while shop-hopping – a black and cream tablecloth check with little yellow ears of corn scattered throughout in the appropriate places. “For me? Thank you, Joyce!”
How cool is that?
A quilt is not just a blanket (Did you say blank-et!?), it is a story. I can sit down with every single quilt I've ever made and tell the saga I have stitched into every square inch of the dang thing. The corn-patch example makes my point, and illustrates why the things get so crowded with not only facts, but with artifacts, as well. The details will most likely disappear when I am no longer on earth to authenticate them, but until then, they qualify what makes one quilt special from another.
I mentioned “Dorotha's Bounty” in an earlier story. I made that quilt for a Thimbleberries® challenge very early in my quilting career, as a tribute to my grandmother, Dorotha Beal Ott. It is one of the few quilts that I still have, and it's very special to me because my mom and two of her brothers used it in their homes for awhile -- Dorotha's children are a part of the history of our quilt. In that story I mentioned I began another tradition while stitching our quilt, and I said I'd save that story for another time. Now is that time. (You can read more about my escapades with making “Dorotha's Bounty” in “The Eldorado Store”, found in the index on this page.)
I do itty-bitty tiny stitching, but I am not bragging. That's the result of being behind a needle for many years doing a raft of other needle arts – stitching quilts, therefore, came “naturally” for me. It is a true story when I told you that, as a novice quilt maker, I took out the little stitches I was making, and replaced them with bigger ones. I thought I must not be doing it right if I was getting little stitches right off the bat. For some preconceived-notion reason, I didn't think you were supposed to do little bitty stitches until at least your third, or perhaps tenth, quilt. Hey, before you say anything, you try being me for awhile. It's like those people who have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, only I have a blond on one shoulder and a brunette on the other. So don't judge me -- it's not an easy burden to bear.
Where was I? Itty-bitty... okay, now I remember...
I had part of “Dorotha's Bounty” stitched by my friend Mary Anne on her long arm, and she left parts of it for me to hand stitch. There were bleached and unbleached muslin spaces, one on each end of the quilt, so I got all elaborate with those “canvases”. On one end I stitched in some packets of seeds with the word “Seeds” above them. On the other end, I stitched some bum-ugly weeds, and likewise stitched in “Weeds” above them. The weeds were sort of a nod to The Peg, who wore her purple thumb with a bashful, resigned pride.
Somewhere in the quilt, in more than one place, I stitched some bees buzzing around, as if to gather nectar from the fabric blooms. They were subtle, but the natural quilting thread stood out on the dark patterned fabric blocks. They could be seen with a little looking, an activity that makes lingering visually with a quilt entertaining.
Still waters run deep, which is an apt way to describe Hubba's tolerance when it comes to my quilting. If it weren't for his frequent wise cracks about my obsession with lint and fiber, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun, not to mention permissible, for me to continue on my fabric rampage. He gives me just enough guff about what I do to knock out any sense of guilt I have about spending so much time quilting, or talking about quilting, or teaching quilting, or writing about quilting, or dreaming of quilts, or designing quilts, or huffing lint, or mainlining lint, or making lint brownies...
There I go again... still waters... okay, I'm back...
Hubba will examine my designs with an I'm-interested-and-paying-attention gaze. Sometimes he'll reach out his index finger, and tap or trace a few of the angles. He has graceful hands for a boy, and the combination of the hands of my true love smoothing my patchwork is breathtaking. He's thinking, he's looking, and he contributes reflective comments and artistic impressions. Hubba has an active inner-designer and artist that unleashes itself when stimulated. It is genuinely offered from his heart, and I tap into quite often.
When I made The Dot's college quilt, she wanted me to quilt in some lilies, which were her favorite flowers at the time. I asked Hubba if he'd draw a lily to use as my template, which he did. In one of the lily-squares, he wrote “Love, Dad” with Perma-pen, indelibly sending that sentiment off to college with her, too.
“Dorotha's Bounty” lay stretched out on the bed before us. Hubba had on his special quilt-gaze, and his hands and eyes were searching. When he saw the almost hidden bees, he chuckled sweetly.
“Look. It's a “bee”. For Burns. You should put a bee on all your quilts.”
And so I have. At first I quilted them into the motif, as I did with the Dorotha quilt. I even drew-slash-stenciled one as part of the label on the back of Clare's quilt. It has evolved, so that now it is my habit to embroider a bee somewhere on the front of each quilt. It's not always in an obvious place, but hidden, like on the Dorotha quilt. The owner, usually someone who knows the quilt-me and has been buttering me up for some time, knows about the bee and will hunt for it. After all, it's a tradition, and it's always found in one of my Morgan Thomas Quilts.
Everybody should have their own quilting “bees”, something that makes every new creation of your needle a kissing cousin to its ancestors. The unabridged stories of my quilts will be lost when I am no longer around to tell them, but the bees and the corn patches will link them together. Someday, a seventy-five year old great-grandchild of ours will pass on one of the heirlooms, telling the story...
“...and she put this bee here, because their last name was Burns. It was your great-great-grandfather's idea, the “bee” for Burns, and because they were very devoted to each other, she made it a tradition.”
“I love that story. Tell it again.”
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns October 2005
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