I went downstairs to my studio intending to play around with some applique. My eyes fell on Great Grandmother’s quilt, folded on the back of the couch, waiting. I’ve been working intermittently (for a year!) on repairing one ring of hexagons in one flower of the “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” pattern. The fabric in that one ring had completely disintegrated.
“You’re not allowed to play until you finish repairing that quilt,” I told myself. “After all, the work of the repair is a kind of applique, or at least uses some of the same skills.” So I picked up my needle, ready to get to it.
The pieces I had previously replaced provide a snapshot of my learning. In other words, my stitching was progressing from embarrassingly awkward to somewhat tidy. Little did I know that when I picked up my needle I would find that my skills had taken a quantum leap forward.
Since the last time I worked on the quilt repair, I had taken Jo Avery’s online class in fabric book making. If you follow her on IG, you know she has a very distinctive style of applique, primarily stitching impressionistic birds and flowers. So I learned needle-turn applique from a master. Not only did I learn and practice the technique, but I began using the proper tools — a thin milliners needle and tiny smooth-headed applique pins.
When I picked up the needle to get started again, the first thing I realized was that I had been using an all-purpose embroidery needle, which was downright clunky compared to a milliners needle. And my long, flat-headed sewing pins were pulling puckers in the tiny hexagons that made it impossible to sew one to the next.
Fitting new hexagons into an already-completed and decades-old quilt is still tricky, fiddly work. But armed with better skills and the right tools, I feel ready to take this repair to the finish line. And I feel sure that the last hexagons in the circle will make the spirit of Great Grandmother proud of her descendant’s learning journey.
A(nother) Year of Reading 