Don't be "Maker Unknown"

Historians are interested in even really mundane stuff.

I am finishing a quilt I made after taking part in a Heidi Parkes workshop a few weeks ago. Generally speaking you need three things to make a quilt. A top layer, a middle layer (often called batting) to provide the padding or warmth, and then a backing layer. Sewing through all three layers and you’re quilting. Once you’ve done as much as you want to to either the top, back or with the quilting then you’ve got your quilt. I made my first quilted item - a square cushion cover from a kit my Mum had given me - when I was about 11. I didn’t know then that what I was doing was quilting and it wasn’t until my mid twenties that I actually made my first quilt. Which I still have on the sofa.

I’ve been following Heidi for a few years on Instagram and have gone through multiple phases - starting with dismissing her work as not “art”, feeling definite jealousy and envy and resentment that she was living the life I should have had (which I know is absurd), to ending up today being a big admirer. The workshop did not disappoint and happened to coincide with discussing a childhood trauma with my therapist, specifically - ways to deal with it 30 years later. Heidi herself has not had an easy time of it and did talk about how she dealt with using inspiration in her art that would make other people uncomfortable if you talked about it. This quilt is extremely personal and would make some people uncomfortable to hear about.

As I was making this piece, which I’m thinking of calling “X Marks the Spot” although that seems too frivolous, I quickly found myself thinking of it as four quadrants. I started top left where I appliquéd some english paper piecing I hadn’t used in another project which happened to be on my desk. When I’d finished I looked around wondering what to do next and saw the Bojagi I’d created in a workshop a few months ago with Youngmin Lee. It had been hanging near my sewing machine while I pondered what to do with it. About 10 years ago something inspired a revelation that “saving fabrics, trims, items, for something special” was another way of becoming a hoarder with tonnes of unused supplies which you need to store while then spending money on even more stuff. Because of this I try not to be fussy about using even notionally finished pieces. Cutting into them and using them as elements in something new. I appliquéd down the bojagi and as I did so I started to think about how the colors were not really to my taste and because the childhood trauma was on my mind I thought back to my childhood bedroom. My mother was, and still is, a gifted interior designer and made her living for a while that way. She has a very certain style which is probably best described as Maximalist British Victorian. My room was pink. Not Barbie pink. A kind of rose-y, light burgundy pink. Pink thick carpet. Wallpaper with little pink flowers on. Pink chair. Pink bedding.

Photo by Nicole King on Unsplash

I am sure I liked it when I was 4 and we moved into that house but over the years I came to feel bogged down and overwhelmed by so much pink. It’s not a color I use in things for myself or that I wear. As I added the Bojagi I started adding some embroidery over it - pink-washing the colors of the bojagi and replacing them with the pink. My mum sews a little and would always hem things with blanket stitch. That’s what I used to applique the bojagi and then also in the binding/edging of the quilt. While stabbing the fabric with a long, milliners needle, I felt a lot of anger towards the pink and what happened back then. As a result I moved to the bottom right and added Charlotte’s eye in green. I read years ago about green being a calming color and when it came to time to quilt the piece I added peaceful, billowing clouds around her eye. Charlotte herself is not exactly a calm cat. Growing up feral has left her very quick to jump to fight/flight, which in her case only ever means flight. Flight and clouds. One of my happiest memories is being in a hot air balloon over the Valley of the Kings in Egypt at sunrise one day. Clouds are associated with peace and freedom for me.

I was once again looking around for what to add to the quilt next when I remembered these shisha mirrors which I had bought for a project that never happened shortly after moving to San Francisco. 8 years and 3 moves later they were finally going to be used.

I’ve always loved these little mirrors on items. These are cheap, plastic ones, mass produced, but as I added them I thought they looked too happy, too cheerful. Egyptians and I’m sure other cultures throughout history, used polished bronze mirrors to direct light into dark places. I was in a dark place but wasn’t comfortable with this much light. I started x-ing out the mirrors. By now I’d realized that this quilt was going to go fully to the darkside and so for the first time I paused and thought about what I wanted to add next and how best to represent it. Earlier this year I’d found some vintage name tape at the East Bay Center for Reuse. I am sure the original owner and, almost certainly, the mother who sewed or ironed them on for him, were perfectly lovely people. I hate waste and although yellowed by time the tape was still perfectly good. Plus a name tape denotes possession, as can an act forced on a victim, and I was dealing with the past so it seemed a good fit. I built a staircase, tall enough for an old man to fall down and lay at the bottom of with a broken hip for 48 hours before someone heard his cries. 48 hours during which I like to think he had time to think about the choices he’d made and actions he’d carried out in his life that had led him to this point.

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

The X marks the spot where he lay. Too frivolous for the title? Too much information? Too dark? Too much light shone on it?

As I looked at the quilt top I created I was angry and peaceful at the same time. I knew I wanted the bottom right to be this calm amid the storm and so got ready to start quilting the clouds. There was nothing more I wanted to add except for some additional darkness and some hexagons.