Up the White Road

Up the White Road

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
T.S. Eliot
"The Waste Land"
v. 359-362

2007-06-01

Rememory

I was thinking about how much I like to quilt today as I was looking at the reflection of my bed in my bathroom mirror. I made this quilt for J for our wedding. As I was looking I was thinking about all the other projects bouncing around in my head that I have started.

Whenever I start thinking like this, I get a bit worried. There are a lot of weird women out there who have made 100+ quilts. I look at their websites where they have taken pictures of said quilts - hanging from fences or clotheslines or spread out on their living room floor. They are kind of like a Monet, - usually look ok from far away, but when they zoom in on the fabrics they have chosen - they are a bit scary - what was she thinking? I can usually overhear these women in fabric stores talking about how quickly they threw their quilt together. Maybe that doesn't sound like a bad thing, but for me, a quilt is a piece of art that I create. The thought of throwing something together defeats the purpose of why I quilt.

So at this point I have made between 15 and 20 quilts. Most of them are really small but I remember each one of them. And when I look at one of them, like I was today, I remember the whole process of creating it - choosing the fabric, cutting it out, sewing it - but the more important thing that I remember is where I was and who I was with. Specifically, the quilt on my bed - I started making it the two months before my wedding. And I remember working on it in a friends basement, hanging out with my mom and sister, while they were folding paper cranes for our wedding decorations.

I am really bad at printing pictures. I love taking them, but I usually forget to print them and put them in albums - I haven't even printed my wedding pictures yet and it's almost been four years. But whenever I think about that quilt, I think about what I was doing when I was making it - so printing those pictures is not as important to me as it might be to others. I have that quilt. It makes me happy to think that I will have these physical reminders in my house as I get older to remind me of what has happened before.

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