#38: Finish My Quilt

Holy hell, making a quilt takes a long bloody time!

Here’s the backstory: My friend S is a really good quilter. She has made a whole bunch of them, and is a member of a quilting guild with her mom. This might make you think that S is a girly girl who kisses all of her stuffed animals before bed and only eats cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. You would be dead wrong. S was a goth in high school, drinks whiskey, and only listens to heavy metal. And she is the coolest, non-stereotypical quilter in the land. Her most recent creations have included a quilt with flaming skull fabric, and the Megadeth symbol. 

Now, I confess – before I knew anything about quilts, when I saw one I was mostly indifferent. I would just be like “hey, look at that. An old time-y blanket. Hmm. And moving on.” Even when I worked at a museum with an extensive quilt collection (The Erland Lee Museum), I didn’t really get why these things were so impressive.

But once S showed me how much time, effort, and skill a quilt really takes, I can now say I am thoroughly amazed when I see a good finished quilt. And I wanted to make one of my own, naturally, so I asked her and her mom to show me the ropes. This was like 2 or 3 years ago, and I’m still not near done – but I am closer than ever before!

Quilts are like the childbirth of crafting. They are expensive, take at LEAST 9+ months to finish, they can be painful (I like to think of thimbles as a tiny suit of armour for your finger), you’ve got to be prepared, careful and precise all the way through, and when it is finished you wind up with a wonderful, unique treasure that you are now obligated to cherish for the rest of your life because the process of making it was so excruciating anything less than museum-quality care would be a slap in the face of the maker.

You start with cutting all the itty bitty pieces of fabric – this takes forever, and has to be PRECISE, man. If your measurements are off, your whole quilt is screwed. Then you iron it all. Next you’ve got to assemble all the bits together so you have a big piece of fabric again, and sew it. More ironing. More sewing; more ironing. This Spring, I finally finished that part of making the quilt. 

Granted, I really only have worked on this like once every few months since I started; I am like a lost shivering puppy without the direction of S and her mom so I only work on the quilt when they have an evening to spare coddling me. 

Little did I know that I have not technically even begun the act of quilting. All of the above is ‘cutting’ and ‘piecing;’ the quilting part is when you sandwich everything (quilt top with cool fabric designs + batting + back) and sew fancy designs all over to make it all stick together. That’s where the time-consuming, fingertip-stabbing, mind-melting labour comes in.  

And you know what, I know I'm not going to get this done for a while. But as I am now at least ready for the quilting to begin, I felt I should mark the occasion. 

To work in progress!