Quilt Scraps Aren’t the Same Without You
together we could make anything fun
A continued puzzlement to our galactic friends is the cutting up and reassembly of fabric scraps that we call quilting. “Why do you cut them apart if they are already a functional piece of fabric?” they ask inquiringly. My mom would explain the fun of joining different fabrics together to make beautiful patterns. Still skeptical about this expenditure of time and effort, the galactics would accept this answer as they saw the joy it brought her.
What they didn’t know is that making a quilt results in even more scraps of fabric. Odds and ends accumulate, and if you’re not careful, they’ll devour your sewing space. First you amass a few extra strips from a quilt. Next they’re joined by an odd shaped piece of fabric that doesn’t quite fold neatly. Before you know it, some half-square triangles that lack obvious cohesion have found their way into an ever growing pile.
Many quilters choose to make order out of chaos, my mom included. In the drawers of the last cabinet that used to sit in my great-grandfather’s shoe store nest various predetermined cuts of fabric. 2 inch, 2.5 inch, 3.5 inch, and 5 inch strips occupy one set of drawers while their square counterparts sit adjacent. It makes for a pleasing array that lends itself to loads of quilt patterns.
My mom’s strategy when she finished a quilt was to tuck those “to be cut” pieces of fabric under the cutting table and let them accumulate until she could not fit any more. Starting a new quilt was way more fun than filing scraps. Periodically she and I would tackle the pile laughing at how out of control it had become, an inevitably.
Like countless projects before this one, I would stand ironing pieces while she would cut them. Ironing was her least favorite part of quilting — second only to applying borders. I, however, will happily press fabric flat for an entire afternoon. This same division of labor also applied to piecing quilts together. We made a great team.
As I dip my toe back into quilting, I’ve been tackling the heaping stack of fabric that we never quite got around to addressing. Standing at the cutting table alone sorting strips into their various lengths lacks something without her company. There’s a lot less laughter and cajoling when completing the process on my own. No one responds when I ask aloud, “Where did this one come from?” while marveling at a particularly ridiculous print. Nor is she there to ooh and aah appropriately over how organized I’ve made the piles in the drawers. It always made her genuinely happy. Yet it feels ridiculous that cutting scraps should be the thing that makes my heart hurt to such an extent.
I’ve made plenty of quilts on my own, but she was always a phone call away for those moments when I hit a snag or when I needed someone to double check my quilt math. (Bungling borders appears to be hereditary.) Every little piece reminds me how much she gave me by teaching me how to quilt and in turn makes me miss her. Quilting has been an activity that we’ve shared since I was dexterous enough to crawl under a stretched quilt on a frame and pass the needle back to her when we used to tie them. She was always in awe of how much I learned through osmosis from years of sitting and watching her. How lucky was I to have had the absolute best teacher.
There will surely be more tales of grief and quilts in the coming months. Want to hear?
P.S. Someday I’ll share the story of when she and I went shopping for a machete when I was in high school.
