As promised, the time has come to reveal my first quilt. I started this project in Heidi Parkes’ Diary Quilt class last October and finished it mid-January. If you’re new to Practising and want to know more, I wrote about the beginning of the quiltmaking process back in November.
Here she is, completed!
Dimensions
One of the reasons I wanted to make a quilt was to challenge myself to make something bigger than I have in a while. So I intended to adhere to dimensions expected of a quilt and researched typical quilt sizes. A crib quilt seemed doable: 4 x 5 feet. Turned out to be almost exactly the size of my studio table.
Some Favourite Details
This little triangle of marigold-dyed silk. The way I improv-pieced the quilt top caused there to be too much fabric here for it to lay flat. To address this, I distributed the excess fabric between lines of quilting, which added a welcome new texture and dimensionality to the surface.
Also pictured in this detail image: the black blanket stitch used to outline the white linen “book.” I’m happy with the decision not to quilt the sections that were intended to represent paper objects: this open book and two stamped envelopes. I wanted them to look like they were laying on top of the cloth.
The Back
I knew from the get-go that I would use an old army-green cotton skirt from Muji for the quilt back. I believe I bought it during the NSCAD Fashion Department trip to NYC in 2013, so it originates from the same period of my life as most of the fabrics in the quilt top. You can see the tiny size label right in the middle, which I left on when I was taking the skirt apart. Though I probably would not choose a fabric this densely woven in the future as it was quite difficult to stitch through by hand, it was worth it for this one, and made possible by Heidi’s suggestion of using pushing and pulling thimbles.
I enjoy that the back, while laboriously hand-stitched, reminds me of the paint-stained moving/utility blankets my dad keeps in the back of his car.
One of the purposes Heidi suggests a diary quilt can fulfill is to cast a spell or make a wish for the future. While working on this project, the state of the world had me thinking a lot about what the word freedom actually means. Something like a wish came to me as I was waiting for the bus one day on my way home from the gym. I wrote it in my phone. I’m a little shy about it, as I usually keep text in my work vague and fragmented. Stitching a full sentence from my own brain brought up fears of being cringe, idealistic, too earnest. That’s why it’s stitched on the back.
Presentation
I don’t know if I love this quilt hung on a white wall. It has a more powerful presence to me in domestic contexts: on a bed, hanging on a clothesline, or even folded up. Something I need to research and think about more.
Have you heard of bed turnings? This beautiful apartment show featuring mail art icon Mitsuko Brooks also comes to mind:
Lessons Learned
Choose fabrics for their feel over their look. One of my favourite sections of the quilt is very plain—just off-white lining fabric from a worn shirt. The softness of the fabric and the shadows created by the quilting make that simple area so lush.
Avoid piecing fabrics of different thicknesses together. This was a fun experiment at first but fiddling with the direction of the seam allowances, at this scale, became annoying.
Be careful with the placement of seams when piecing translucent fabrics as they will show prominently! Maybe play with this.
Title
I haven’t settled on a title yet and am just calling it Diary Quilt for now. I considered using the word “unbidden” in the title when I heard it used by Sara Hendren during her episode of On Being. She acknowledges the culture of choosing and optimizing in which we exist today, and refers to theologian William May who encouraged, rather, “cultivating an openness to the unbidden… the unchosen features of our lives.”
“I think history shows that the meaning of our lives is as much made by the demands that are placed on us and what we see in those exchanges, as much as the choosing. I really do believe that.”
— Sara Hendren
What I value most about the quiltmaking approach Heidi teaches is that it strikes a balance between optimizing to suit the very real needs we learn we have as we get to know ourselves, and being receptive to what the unbidden has to teach us.
Those are my thoughts at this point. I’m open to title suggestions if you have any!
Studio Sale + New Work
Huge thanks to those who were able to come by the studio on February 3rd, and to those who added a painting to their collections! Of the new works, one remains available:
Fuel (4 sources of energy)
[video] Myths in the American Quilt Story from Mary Fons
[lecture] Looking forward to “The Revolt of the Papers; or Bits and Pieces Toward a Feminist Theory of Scrap” by Deidre Lynch, coming up on March 11th. “This richly illustrated lecture samples the practices of collecting, excerpting, collaging, and scrapbooking that were a popular female pastime across Britain and even Lower Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”
[music] the record by boygenius
[TV] More a source of comfort than energy, helping me get through the dark winter: Younger, about a forty-year-old mom who pretends to be twenty-six to get a job in a publishing house so she can put her daughter through college.
Paid subscribers, I invite you to read on below—I’ve started a new page on my website that I’m really into and want to tell you about. Everyone else, thank you for reading and please take care till next time.
xx Clara
“In sewing, is there a name for the space between the stitches?”
— Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
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