Rag-Bin Hugs

Every once in awhile comes something to cause a personal course to alter and for me, that ‘once in awhile’ was plopped, quite unceremoniously, into my hands one Sunday evening following our weekly family dinner.

I sat there in the rocker glider, quietly for a moment, just taking it in. I instantly knew that I was holding a very special history in my hands, all sewn up and bunched into one extremely fragrant bundle. The smell, I have to admit, had hit me brutally fast but... it wasn’t actually a bad smell, not musty or stinky in any way, but more of a very strong perfume that somehow drew me completely into a different time and to a place that felt like home. The connection I had already felt with this old quilt top I held in awe was overwhelming. I felt an instant longing to know my Great-Gramma and an even more instant loss at knowing that I never would.

The first I had ever heard tell of this quilt top had been only weeks before I held it. I had just opened my longarm quilting business and my mom, just in passing conversation one day, had mentioned that there was quilt top that her grandmother had made for her and my dad as a wedding gift. I’m not sure if my dad had ever seen the top in progress, I’ll have to ask my mom about that one, but, if he were alive today to see the finished product I can guarantee he would have LOVED it... his colour choices were loud and far ahead of the times! This is where it got a wee bit confusing but I’m just thankful the top didn’t end up lost! Apparently, my Great-Gramma Matchett had pieced the quilt top squares, starting in the Fall of 1967 while she visited the family in Nipigon from her home in New Brunswick. Now, my Gramma Matchett had said she would finish the square joining and quilting part of it for her since Great-Gramma had to return home before being able to finish them herself. Gramma Matchett did, in fact, finish joining the blocks but, didn’t finish the actual quilting. My mom figures it got sidetracked because she, herself, had no real interest in the quilt - but I’ll get to that later! From Gramma, it went to my moms older sister, Peggy, who had the interest in finishing the project but not the inclination, as it would turn out. So, then from Peggy, it went to my moms younger sister, Janna, who thought that she might give it a go but, instead it ended up sitting in wait to be finished until it came to me... 46 years from when it had been started. 

My mom had tried to prepare me for the utter ugliness that she remembered the quilt top being but, thought that I could maybe finish it, even just as extra practice with my new machine. I remembered those words she had said as I held this 46 year old beauty in my hands, as I ran my fingers over the still incredibly vibrant fabrics and I felt myself so close to tears that is was actually physically hurting to hold them in. My mom had called this amazingness - ugly.

I had felt touched immediately by the memories of this quilt top, memories that I would never ever even begin to know clutched me tightly and I didn’t even understand why just then. The colours, the patterns, the textures had blocked out everything, everyone in the room. I was completely blown away in this sudden new presence of comfort.

I knew, not just by smell, but also by touch that my first order of business would be to wash this quilt top and even just the thought of having to do so terrified me. Wash a pieced quilt top on it’s own? No way, Dude!!!!! But, I knew that I couldn’t possibly work with it in the condition it now sat. And so I asked my mom...

“Do you think I should wash it first, Mom?”

Of course she agreed with me that it needed to be washed and , as she generally does, she made me feel as though any decision I made would be the right one for the quilt. Knowing that she fully trusted me made it even tougher because I so did not want to disappoint by ruining such a special piece of artwork.

I continued on with the agonizing internal debate, as we all had dessert (cupcakes... my FAV), over washing the top. I had touched those carefully chosen, painfully cut and meticulously placed and sewn strips of fabrics. I had run my fingers along the hand-sewn seams. I had witnessed the pains that had, with nothing but love, been taken to create this stunningness. I also felt the pain that could be the price of having ruined an irreplaceable history.

I turned to my Aunt Janna who has been sewing for as long as I can remember, hoping she could help with my desicsion. “Jan, do you think I should try washing it first?” I asked her. I was searching for permission, well okay, I’ll admit it, I really just wanted someone, anyone else to make the decision for me.

It was my mom who called the answer out from the kitchen before Janna could even start her reply...
"Honey, it’s 46 years old,” she started simply. “ You won’t be able to do anything with it in the condition it’s in. If it falls apart in the wash then... it falls apart in the wash.”

And there I had my answer.

I couldn’t let it go and had sat holding the top through dessert while listening as both my mom and her sister recollected upon their memories of its making. The sound of smiling had taken over my moms voice as she spoke but her expression admitted only to a slight wonder of sorts. She was entirely amazed at and I think even a might ashamed of having denied the beauty and especially of having been so incredibly unappreciative of all that it held.

I saw her eyes as they drifted back to another time while she told us all of how she could remember the quilt being pieced together. She was looking into her own past as she spoke of watching her Gramma sat perched on the edge of her parents bed, the rag bin by her feet. She had cut, with ordinary kitchen scizzors, all of those strips and she had sewn them onto the muslin backing squares, entirely by hand, with whatever bits of thread she had available. And, as I listened, I couldn’t keep my fingertips from running along the stitching lines, rainbowed with colour, and I fell in love with the back just as I had the front. I loved knowing her stitches so much actually, that I felt almost wrong in even the thought of covering any one of them with a backing that would hide her handwork.


Rainbowed stitches

There was one fabric pattern that I somehow knew, it had been the first to catch my eye and the one that I just kept going back to. I recognized this pattern even though I knew I had never seen or touched it. I had to have seen it somewhere though because, I knew it. I felt my eyes glazing over in the figuring and then I made myself speak up about it. I said that I recognized this design and that I could see in my mind an old picture of my own Gramma Matchett from one of the old family photo albums, wearing that pattern and was I being insane? I admitted how ridiculous I knew it sounded but it turned out not be ridiculous, at all. I had seen the fabric in pictures.



The one I knew...

The rag bin had been full of Grammas old housedresses and aprons. And so it had been countless hours that my great-gramma had set upon the side of the bed, cutting and sewing for her granddaughter, a tangible history of her mother. This was a total work of absolute love. I had never been fortunate enough to have met the woman who had carefully stitched these memories together but I had known and immensely loved the woman who had worn each one of these fabrics. My gramma had chosen these patterns, each one of them. She had lived in them, worked in them, dreamed in them. She’d set her famous bread to rise, put baked beans to simmering and had sat to read and record her favourite poems in them. She’d smiled in these fabrics, she’d laughed in these fabrics and I am certain she even shed a few tears in the fabrics.

The weight of the quilt top felt even heavier to me now but, it was a welcomed and somehow nourishing kind of heaviness. It was the heaviness of home. I could almost feel the roots of my own unknown past trying to pull me in, almost pleading for acknowledgement.

I fell asleep that night with an incredibly heavy heart. I had more questions still than answers and I hoped that I would find what I needed in the work that was yet to be done.

Next morning, first thing, I washed that old quilt top. I felt like I did when I was a kid and my beloved pink blankie was being washed; feeling forever pass with each cycle of the machine and panicking that it wouldn’t come back to me just exactly the same as it had gone in. And just as my blankie had always come back, so did that determined old quilt top... WHEW!

Once I had washed and dried the top, I gently folded and carried it out to my workshop, laid it out atop my cutting table and set to checking every inch of it for snags, loose seams and any other signs of damage. It wasn’t until I reached to thread the end of a loose thread through the eye of a needle that it hit me - this very same length of bright turquoise thread had been threaded, 46 years before by the hadnd of my Great-Gramma. And let me tell you, it hit me hard. Tears began to stream until I was completely out of control and in a sobbing, heaving mess.

Was I being ridiculous? Probably so. But, I must really have needed that breakdown.

Once I made it back into the land of sanity (somewhat, anyhow) and had repaired and squared the top, I started my search for a backing fabric. My aunt had told me that there had been an old piece of batting as well as an old, plain and well worn sheet that had been meant for backing kept in with the 
quilt top that just had not stood the test of time in wait; she had decided it best to “pitch them.” This information had left me with the choice of both backing and batting and I felt entirely inadequate for the task. I wanted something that would belong and not just something that would suffice.

So, where does one find the perfect backing for a 46 year old quilt top? Why, the World Wide Web, of course! I took the top back inside the house and carefully laid it out before the garden doors and atop the carpet in my bedroom so I could take it fully in as natural light flowed perfectly over it. I smiled as I cast my eyes over its entirety. It was really the first completely ‘overall’ look I had actually had. To my surprise, there were three colours, out of the MANY, that popped out at me without question... bright blue, bright green and a light but brightly buttered yellow.

I turned on my trusty ipad and typed “vintage fabrics” into the search engine. My tummy fluttered 
with excitement at the many images of lovely vintage patterns that appeared and then sank as I quickly realized that these were merely small cuts of unused fabrics bought by people years ago and couldn’t even begin to cover the 4 full meters I would need. I could have found a number of fabrics from the era and pieced them to create an interesting and era appropriate backing but that just didn’t feel right. I didn’t want for anything to take away even a single glance from all that the top deserved. 

So instead, I cleared my search and typed in “retro fabrics” and I knew I was on the main line to
perfection.

I spent hours looking through the virtual pages of fabrics, saving photos of the ones that I thought could work and also that I thought my mom might like. It had to be of a unified, sixties pattern style but stay muted enough to allow the top the spotlight it so deserved. It turned out that the very first fabric that had caught my eye and I had clicked on was the one I ultimately chose and later that night 
ordered. A late 60’s style, flower-power type design which, as I looked back and forth between ipad screen and quilt top, managed to pull the three stand-out colours to the backing, perfectly! I knew it was the one but I wanted for my mom to have the final say on whether or not she liked it because it was, after all, a quilt made for her. I’m beyond happy to say that she agreed with me because I don’t believe that any other backing could even remotely have worked. I worried, of course, after I had placed the order that the screen colours wouldn’t match the actual quilt colours but once the fabric  had arrived it was as though they had been given to me all together; that’s how perfect of a match that backing was for the top.

Now, onto my next big debate... okay, agonization... Which type of batting do I use?

One of my other aunts, on my dads side of the family, has been heavily immersed in the quilting world for years and I figured she would be a good one to ask about batting that would have been used in the 60’s. I, knowing very little about historical quilting supplies, had no clue and was asking for help. Quite dumbly, it would seem, I had made an incredibly wrong and ridiculous assumption that it might have been a polyester batting - wasn’t polyester big in those days??? I didn’t think it was such a dumb question but I was quickly put in my place that it would likely have been wool. Okaayyy... I asked no more questions. I didn’t want to feel less than while I was pouring my whole heart into trying to do the best work that I could on this one special treat.

I don’t think it’s any surprise in the quilting world of today that many quilters have VERY strict and quite often snooty attitudes about which battings are theeeee battings to use and... to ONLY use which leaves any other batting just in the wrong. I generally try to steer clear of batting debates and choose instead to go with the ‘feel’ of the quilt. I just knew that by choosing the simple polyester batting that had been my first inclination (I’ll give you all a moment to recover from your horrified gasps of choke-worthy air......) I could easily find myself in hot water with the quilting world that 
surrounds me here where I live but that didn’t matter to me. What mattered to me was what the top had been waiting for.

Once I had pieced and loaded the backing onto the longarm frame and still was undecided, I covered half of it with the Hobbs 80/20 (of quilting pop culture fame) and the other half with the Hobbs polyester (unfairly shunned in far too many circles)... don’t get me wrong, I love the 80/20, too, I simply don’t like being told that I absolutely HAVE to use it ... Anyway, I then laid the top across both halves and spent the next 2 days feeling each side in turn every time I happened by. It was the fresh life that the soft loft of the polyester batt offered which won my heart.

Next up was thread choice! This one was easy. The bright blue that most shone out from all of the fabrics, I had figured, must have been the one that Great-Gramma had liked most of all out of that old rag bin for she had, after all, made certain it had reigned supremely across the top. I matched that blue with thread and for the first time I felt no questions, no fear, just confidence that it was right.
Now, the top in its entirety was very busy; long, thin strips having been sewn diagonally onto squares cut from an old sheet and placed together to create a busy maze of diamonds. I now know that the proper name for this type of quilt is ‘String Quilt’ however, I prefer to call it the Strips of Love Quilt. So, in not wanting to take away, in any way, from the living pattern itself, I quickly decided upon a simple circular meandering to offset all the straight lines and add softness to the angles. Most importantly, I had wanted the quilting to stay muted so that Great- Grammas work would be the only shine the limelight would offer.

Great-Gramma's handwork of beauty

BINDINNNGGGG... the LAST step in this agonizingly, exciting and over-emotional undertaking was about to begin!! Honestly, I was at a complete loss with this prospect. I found myself wishing for some long-lost piece of Grammas clothing to fit with the quilt top fabrics but, even as I did, I knew the wish was simply a wish. But, there was one strip of fabric laced here and there throughout the top that answered my dilemma loud and clear. A plain, black cotton with crisp, very intermittent brushstrokes of stick figures peeking out in places was what had caught my eye. It was thanks to the old housedress that Janna had remembered as one of her favourites that Gramma had worn that had solidified my decision.

Binding choice FOUND

And so it ended up that all that was left for me to do was to simply frame in plain, black cotton: 

the gift of a very special quilt
 

THAT
 

my Great-Gramma pieced for my Mom
 

THAT
 

my Gramma helped her to finish

THAT

my aunt Peggy took home intending to finish into a quilt
 

THAT
 

my aunt Janna then took home intending to finish into a quilt
 

THAT
 

at last, found its way to me to finish into a quilt 46 years later
 

FOR
 

my mom
 

A finished combination

It may have taken awhile to complete but somehow, I think this quilt of love may actually have somehow completed me. It was both with humbling reluctance and uplifting joy that I gave my mom her amazingly stunning quilt once I had finished it. I felt the treasure of working on this quilt and it filled me entirely. I was unbelievably saddened at the loss of it even though I knew it would never be lost to me... I can bundle up in that quilt at my moms any time at all when I need to feel the rag-bin hugs of my past. 

A Rag-Bin Hug