I have made many quilts in my life. I learned to quilt in Westchester, when I lived in Crompond, New York, just outside of Poughkeepsie. I quilt when I love.
In 1997 I made my first quilt for Ericle. That quilt, when I still had a beautiful oak quilting frame, took me over a year to complete. Piecing fabric is actually the easy part. It is the quilting, the hand sewn designs that bind three layers together, which takes the most time. I will not tell you that I am a great quilter at all, but that quilt was asked to be exhibited in the local library for an exhibition of local quilters. The public enjoyed it before Ericle did. The pattern I used was, Jacob's Ladder Crisscross. Quilts are constructed of squares for the most part and Jacob's Ladder Crisscross constantly fooled my eye, (as well as everyone else), because it is very difficult to see where the square is for that pattern. In the photograph below, I've highlighted the square which gets repeated, because otherwise I am constantly fooled all over again.
Jacob's Ladder is, of course, a story from the old testament. I chose this pattern for Ericle because Ericle and I shared an existence. The existence of being bi-racial. He and I never had to explain ourselves to one another. Being bi-racial is often a life spent almost constantly having to explain your existence to the rest of the world. I never asked him how or why he got into Yale or why he knew who Pete Seeger was, or even why he seemed to know so many far left communists. In turn, he never asked me how it came to be that sauerkraut and knackwurst was my favourite food, and he was the only one able to explain to others why I balled my eyes out when Nixon died. He summered on a Lake Waramaug, and I had summered on Prince Edward Island. It was all a given between us. He was raised Jewish and like me having been raised Catholic, we often found ourselves, in the eyes of others, somehow not being the real deal to others who practiced the faiths. We were thought of as interlopers somehow. He spoke Hebrew, had been given a Bar Mitzvah and owned a yarmulke. But still people laughed at him when he said he was Jewish in the same way people look at me sideways when I say I was raised Catholic. Jews are supposed to look a certain way as well as a Catholic. Jews and Catholics aren't supposed to look like Ericle and I. So I chose the pattern in reference to his heritage and I liked the hidden square because it symbolized, for me, all that is hidden when one is bi-racial. We are a people that others find difficult to see.
In 1998 Emerson was born. He was the first grandchild from the eldest child of my best friend Freda. I chose the pattern Yo-Yo's Reborn because it looked lively and fun. I imagined a child would spend endless amounts of time staring and poking at the fun bright circles. The quilt is appliquéd rather than pieced. I don't sew so neatly and I know I worried that hand sewing might result in the quilt, living with a baby, lasting all of a month, so I think I quickly changed course and machine sewed everything in place. I really can't remember now. I do remember that the quilt was half finished before I was due on Prince Edward Island and that I packed it, along with my sewing machine, into my car and off I drove across Canada to finish it. While watching TV with family I continued the quilt, asking Charlie to thread needles as my eyes could not find the necessary hole in a needle.
One of the other reasons I chose this pattern was of course the name. Yo-yo's being a toy of youth and reborn being a nod to new life. Of all the quilt patterns that I can think of only one seems to have gone out of style. And it is a pattern that whenever I see it I think of death, and decay. Yo-yo's Reborn was designed by someone who saw the Yo-Yo design, noticed the good fabric still usable and decided to take it all apart and do something new. Below is the quilt pattern in its original form. A tedious, old fashioned dust collector that is much too fragile a construction to be of much use beyond decoration. Quilting historically is a craft of recycling. In some ways, birth, life and death are a kind of recycling as well. I buried my own father wrapped in the handmade quilts he loved and collected throughout his life.
In 1998 I quilted, Doves in the Window, for James H. Case. He doesn't know I quilted it for him because he never received it. I chickened out and thought it inappropriate to give such a labour of love to a teacher. I was in love with what he had opened within me as a student and life learner. I kept a small journal of Haiku-like poems as I quilted the piece and I did eventually send those to him. The quilt is in my guest room and whenever I enter the room I say: Hello, Jim's quilt. It will always belong to him even though he does not know of its existence. I chose to piece it in brown. Jim always wore brown shoes which were always scuffed at the toe. He was a shy man in some ways and whenever he laughed he covered his mouth like a Japanese geisha giggling. He could trace his ancestry back to The mayflower and his first marriage was to a Rockefeller, but I will swear to you right now that through literature and teaching he learned to be human. He was a good man. The kind of man that when you say: He was a good man, you can feel it in your bones.
When the Twin Towers went down I went onto the Internet and I think I used the Google term: What do Muslims want? or Why are Muslims upset? I didn't know anything at the time about Muslims or Islam or why, to me at the time, overnight it seemed, Muslims were on the warpath with America. I wanted to talk to a bona-fide Muslim and find out what the problem was. I found Mohammad, who lived in Amman, Jordan. We talked for years! And in all those years he never seemed to be pissed off about anything. He was as shocked as I was with what happened on 9/11 and like me he watched the news that day and cried. Jordan is an ally with the United States and he worked within the military as a mechanic servicing airplanes. After many years a group of servicemen, including him, were sent to the United States, to Binghamton, NY where for a month or so, they were to train in helicopter maintenance. None of these men were allowed to go anywhere on their own unless they had known family members in the area which he did not. He only had me a woman he had never met. On his end I can not tell you how he managed things but his fellow servicemen covered for him in such a way that I was able to pick him up, place him under a blanket and drive him off back to Buffalo, NY for 24 hours. In that 24 hours I drove him to the American side of Niagara Falls so he could see it and we went shopping for all the gifts he wanted to return home with. We ate at an Olive Garden restaurant where I watched his face transform to horror as the waitress, answering his questions, informed him that prosciutto was a type of cured uncooked pork. When the waitress left our table he was incredulous that pork could be eaten raw. It was like human heads could be found on menus in America. No amount of explaining could convince him that this was not considered an odd thing to eat. So I ended up ordering a meal for him which I scrutinized thoroughly for any hidden ingredients that make him feel unrest. On our way back to Binghamton, in the dead of the night on interstate 81, he turned to me and told me of an Arab saying. He said: You will not know anyone until you share money, share food, and go on a long trip with them. Further he said: We have done all three. We continued to talk for many more years but that was the last time I ever saw him again. He went on to marry and have children. Last year he made contact with me to beg me to find charities that might send money to him. He had made a bad investment which had left him desperately poor. His retirement pay from the military was being garnished to pay his debts and he sounded, as I have mentioned, desperate.
In 2006 I quilted for him, Appalachian Sunset. I quilted it in blues, his favourite colour. He received it long before he had married and he kept it safe using it only when he had to have it near lest it become old and worn. He told me it was the most beautiful thing he owned. When he contacted me last year I asked him if he still had the quilt and he replied yes. He told me that his wife had asked about it and that he had told her who had made it and given it to him but that it was now the only thing of beauty in his life other than his children. He said it reminded him of better days and that it was precious to him. Below is the pattern from which I made the quilt and though the picture is not of the quilt I made for Mohammad I followed the colours used in the picture because they seemed perfect for him. I chose the pattern, Appalachian Sunset because he and I had been on a long journey, of sorts, together. We had hiked our own Appalachian Trail. Too, because when he smiled his face lit up like the sun. He lived in the west of the world, I lived in the east; we were always a sunset apart from one another.
As corny as it may sound, I hope that quilt stays with him all the days of his life.
I can not remember what year it was that Freda celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary, but I do know I made one of the most beautiful quilts for her. It was the Windmill pattern and I quilted it in reds, whites and blacks. It was gorgeous! And I could not wait to send it off to her and later hear of her joy. That quilt, that labour of love, those hours I spent making it got lost in the mail. Lost in the mail by post woman, Barbi. I glared at her for years afterward. She was a dingbat. The day I posted it the post office was filled with oodles of people. I arrived at the counter with my declaration forms all filled out and she set them aside after my paying for the package and she said she would get to it later. Dingbat Barbi, I am convinced, later wondered who and what went where and sent my quilt to Bum Fuck, Wisconsin or some other heap of a place named, nowhere. I still smart about that and I think Freda still has a space inside where doubt lingers that I even made a quilt to begin with. It's just one of those things.
I made a quilt for my father once. I wanted him to have a quilt which I had made to add to his collection. I finished the quilt, and on the day he was to come for a rare visit to me, I laid the quilt out on the lawn so that he would notice it upon arrival. He never noticed it and even when I drew his attention to the quilt he didn't seem impressed. So I put it in my car instead and used it for a car blanket. God knows where it is now. I do wish however I had kept it because it would have been one of the quilts I chose to bury him in, that way I would have insured that for all of eternity it remained with him. Whether he liked it or not. He probably has more time now to love and notice me.
And now I am on perhaps my last quilt. I am using the same pattern that I used when making the anniversary quilt for Freda only now I am piecing with blues and grays. I have begun this quit, this time, twice. The first time I went through my fabric and selected all of the fabrics which I thought were gorgeous. I halfway pieced it together and realized that though it was nice it was not for Christian. It was too feminine and I could not see him enjoying it at all. So I sat down again and looked at all the pictures I had of him and noticed that he was always wearing blues and grays. So back I went and re-cut the fabric. I will deliver it soon, by hand to him in Denmark.
Back in the early 80's I met Christian on a subway platform in New York City. We were both headed to the East Village but he was lost and stopped to ask for directions of me. We travelled together on the train talking and when we alighted from the train to the street at Cooper Union, we stayed with one another, on and off, for the next week or so after which time he returned to Denmark. Our connection back then was strong and deep and for me it has never wavered. When I landed in Mexico I suddenly realized that should he look for me he would never think to find me in Mexico. So I began to look for him. It took 7 years for me to finally find him. And during one of our many conversations, fearing I might never see him again, I blurted: Go to sleep knowing you are loved as we hung up the phone one evening. He too began to say it back to me as our conversations came to an end and that is when I decided to make him a quilt. Tucked into the underside of the quilt, the side that rests upon the skin, English at one end, Danish at the other, will be that phrase: Go to sleep knowing you are loved.
Right now I have finished cutting the pieces, have arranged the blocks to my satisfaction and I am in the process of sewing the top together. So far it looks like this:
And here is the phrase which each night, after I am long gone and have returned back home, he can remind himself that I am thinking of him, as he tucks himself into bed.
There is a lot that I sew into this quilt. I sew in the obvious, the love, the friendship, the years spent thinking, but I also sew into it the hope that his daughter will one day snuggle under the quit too. I sew into it knowing that I will be forever in Denmark with this quilt and that it is proof that Christian and I were real and once knew one another. It is a tangible witness to both our lives. Blue piping will be added to hold and bring the squares together and a barn type old red with a paisley print will be added to flesh it out.
It was purposefully made to look old and weathered as Christian spent his life as a farmer and knowing what I know about him, updated now, I know he is not in for the shiny and new.
I listen to the sounds he makes over the phone. I hear his feet shuffle across the floor, and I can hear the movement of his Adam's Apple as his sips from his wine. I can hear his frailty and I know time is drawing to a close.
I chose this pattern because in the description of the pattern the author wrote: Men respond to this design the most. You can't see it from the picture but once pieced together another set of smaller windmills become present between the larger blocked windmills. The quilt is unusual too because the blocks are placed on point and is sewn together horizontally. Keeping that straight has been nothing short of maddening. There is always a moment during quilting when one asks oneself: Why am I making this quilt?
When I think of my upcoming trip to Denmark I think of the quilts' journey more than of my own passage; I will simply be a courier of sorts.
Christian is the last person that I have known in my life that I want to see one more time. I have been the most fortunate of women to have had the chance to revisit those I have loved, for that one last look, that one last conversation. This quilt for Christian is my one last gift.
In 1997 I made my first quilt for Ericle. That quilt, when I still had a beautiful oak quilting frame, took me over a year to complete. Piecing fabric is actually the easy part. It is the quilting, the hand sewn designs that bind three layers together, which takes the most time. I will not tell you that I am a great quilter at all, but that quilt was asked to be exhibited in the local library for an exhibition of local quilters. The public enjoyed it before Ericle did. The pattern I used was, Jacob's Ladder Crisscross. Quilts are constructed of squares for the most part and Jacob's Ladder Crisscross constantly fooled my eye, (as well as everyone else), because it is very difficult to see where the square is for that pattern. In the photograph below, I've highlighted the square which gets repeated, because otherwise I am constantly fooled all over again.
 |
| Jacob's Ladder |
Jacob's Ladder is, of course, a story from the old testament. I chose this pattern for Ericle because Ericle and I shared an existence. The existence of being bi-racial. He and I never had to explain ourselves to one another. Being bi-racial is often a life spent almost constantly having to explain your existence to the rest of the world. I never asked him how or why he got into Yale or why he knew who Pete Seeger was, or even why he seemed to know so many far left communists. In turn, he never asked me how it came to be that sauerkraut and knackwurst was my favourite food, and he was the only one able to explain to others why I balled my eyes out when Nixon died. He summered on a Lake Waramaug, and I had summered on Prince Edward Island. It was all a given between us. He was raised Jewish and like me having been raised Catholic, we often found ourselves, in the eyes of others, somehow not being the real deal to others who practiced the faiths. We were thought of as interlopers somehow. He spoke Hebrew, had been given a Bar Mitzvah and owned a yarmulke. But still people laughed at him when he said he was Jewish in the same way people look at me sideways when I say I was raised Catholic. Jews are supposed to look a certain way as well as a Catholic. Jews and Catholics aren't supposed to look like Ericle and I. So I chose the pattern in reference to his heritage and I liked the hidden square because it symbolized, for me, all that is hidden when one is bi-racial. We are a people that others find difficult to see.
In 1998 Emerson was born. He was the first grandchild from the eldest child of my best friend Freda. I chose the pattern Yo-Yo's Reborn because it looked lively and fun. I imagined a child would spend endless amounts of time staring and poking at the fun bright circles. The quilt is appliquéd rather than pieced. I don't sew so neatly and I know I worried that hand sewing might result in the quilt, living with a baby, lasting all of a month, so I think I quickly changed course and machine sewed everything in place. I really can't remember now. I do remember that the quilt was half finished before I was due on Prince Edward Island and that I packed it, along with my sewing machine, into my car and off I drove across Canada to finish it. While watching TV with family I continued the quilt, asking Charlie to thread needles as my eyes could not find the necessary hole in a needle.
 |
| Yo-Yo's Reborn |
One of the other reasons I chose this pattern was of course the name. Yo-yo's being a toy of youth and reborn being a nod to new life. Of all the quilt patterns that I can think of only one seems to have gone out of style. And it is a pattern that whenever I see it I think of death, and decay. Yo-yo's Reborn was designed by someone who saw the Yo-Yo design, noticed the good fabric still usable and decided to take it all apart and do something new. Below is the quilt pattern in its original form. A tedious, old fashioned dust collector that is much too fragile a construction to be of much use beyond decoration. Quilting historically is a craft of recycling. In some ways, birth, life and death are a kind of recycling as well. I buried my own father wrapped in the handmade quilts he loved and collected throughout his life.
 |
| The old dusty Yo-yo design. |
In 1998 I quilted, Doves in the Window, for James H. Case. He doesn't know I quilted it for him because he never received it. I chickened out and thought it inappropriate to give such a labour of love to a teacher. I was in love with what he had opened within me as a student and life learner. I kept a small journal of Haiku-like poems as I quilted the piece and I did eventually send those to him. The quilt is in my guest room and whenever I enter the room I say: Hello, Jim's quilt. It will always belong to him even though he does not know of its existence. I chose to piece it in brown. Jim always wore brown shoes which were always scuffed at the toe. He was a shy man in some ways and whenever he laughed he covered his mouth like a Japanese geisha giggling. He could trace his ancestry back to The mayflower and his first marriage was to a Rockefeller, but I will swear to you right now that through literature and teaching he learned to be human. He was a good man. The kind of man that when you say: He was a good man, you can feel it in your bones.
 |
| Jim's Quilt in Brown |
When the Twin Towers went down I went onto the Internet and I think I used the Google term: What do Muslims want? or Why are Muslims upset? I didn't know anything at the time about Muslims or Islam or why, to me at the time, overnight it seemed, Muslims were on the warpath with America. I wanted to talk to a bona-fide Muslim and find out what the problem was. I found Mohammad, who lived in Amman, Jordan. We talked for years! And in all those years he never seemed to be pissed off about anything. He was as shocked as I was with what happened on 9/11 and like me he watched the news that day and cried. Jordan is an ally with the United States and he worked within the military as a mechanic servicing airplanes. After many years a group of servicemen, including him, were sent to the United States, to Binghamton, NY where for a month or so, they were to train in helicopter maintenance. None of these men were allowed to go anywhere on their own unless they had known family members in the area which he did not. He only had me a woman he had never met. On his end I can not tell you how he managed things but his fellow servicemen covered for him in such a way that I was able to pick him up, place him under a blanket and drive him off back to Buffalo, NY for 24 hours. In that 24 hours I drove him to the American side of Niagara Falls so he could see it and we went shopping for all the gifts he wanted to return home with. We ate at an Olive Garden restaurant where I watched his face transform to horror as the waitress, answering his questions, informed him that prosciutto was a type of cured uncooked pork. When the waitress left our table he was incredulous that pork could be eaten raw. It was like human heads could be found on menus in America. No amount of explaining could convince him that this was not considered an odd thing to eat. So I ended up ordering a meal for him which I scrutinized thoroughly for any hidden ingredients that make him feel unrest. On our way back to Binghamton, in the dead of the night on interstate 81, he turned to me and told me of an Arab saying. He said: You will not know anyone until you share money, share food, and go on a long trip with them. Further he said: We have done all three. We continued to talk for many more years but that was the last time I ever saw him again. He went on to marry and have children. Last year he made contact with me to beg me to find charities that might send money to him. He had made a bad investment which had left him desperately poor. His retirement pay from the military was being garnished to pay his debts and he sounded, as I have mentioned, desperate.
In 2006 I quilted for him, Appalachian Sunset. I quilted it in blues, his favourite colour. He received it long before he had married and he kept it safe using it only when he had to have it near lest it become old and worn. He told me it was the most beautiful thing he owned. When he contacted me last year I asked him if he still had the quilt and he replied yes. He told me that his wife had asked about it and that he had told her who had made it and given it to him but that it was now the only thing of beauty in his life other than his children. He said it reminded him of better days and that it was precious to him. Below is the pattern from which I made the quilt and though the picture is not of the quilt I made for Mohammad I followed the colours used in the picture because they seemed perfect for him. I chose the pattern, Appalachian Sunset because he and I had been on a long journey, of sorts, together. We had hiked our own Appalachian Trail. Too, because when he smiled his face lit up like the sun. He lived in the west of the world, I lived in the east; we were always a sunset apart from one another.
 |
| Appalachian Sunset. |
As corny as it may sound, I hope that quilt stays with him all the days of his life.
I can not remember what year it was that Freda celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary, but I do know I made one of the most beautiful quilts for her. It was the Windmill pattern and I quilted it in reds, whites and blacks. It was gorgeous! And I could not wait to send it off to her and later hear of her joy. That quilt, that labour of love, those hours I spent making it got lost in the mail. Lost in the mail by post woman, Barbi. I glared at her for years afterward. She was a dingbat. The day I posted it the post office was filled with oodles of people. I arrived at the counter with my declaration forms all filled out and she set them aside after my paying for the package and she said she would get to it later. Dingbat Barbi, I am convinced, later wondered who and what went where and sent my quilt to Bum Fuck, Wisconsin or some other heap of a place named, nowhere. I still smart about that and I think Freda still has a space inside where doubt lingers that I even made a quilt to begin with. It's just one of those things.
I made a quilt for my father once. I wanted him to have a quilt which I had made to add to his collection. I finished the quilt, and on the day he was to come for a rare visit to me, I laid the quilt out on the lawn so that he would notice it upon arrival. He never noticed it and even when I drew his attention to the quilt he didn't seem impressed. So I put it in my car instead and used it for a car blanket. God knows where it is now. I do wish however I had kept it because it would have been one of the quilts I chose to bury him in, that way I would have insured that for all of eternity it remained with him. Whether he liked it or not. He probably has more time now to love and notice me.
And now I am on perhaps my last quilt. I am using the same pattern that I used when making the anniversary quilt for Freda only now I am piecing with blues and grays. I have begun this quit, this time, twice. The first time I went through my fabric and selected all of the fabrics which I thought were gorgeous. I halfway pieced it together and realized that though it was nice it was not for Christian. It was too feminine and I could not see him enjoying it at all. So I sat down again and looked at all the pictures I had of him and noticed that he was always wearing blues and grays. So back I went and re-cut the fabric. I will deliver it soon, by hand to him in Denmark.
Back in the early 80's I met Christian on a subway platform in New York City. We were both headed to the East Village but he was lost and stopped to ask for directions of me. We travelled together on the train talking and when we alighted from the train to the street at Cooper Union, we stayed with one another, on and off, for the next week or so after which time he returned to Denmark. Our connection back then was strong and deep and for me it has never wavered. When I landed in Mexico I suddenly realized that should he look for me he would never think to find me in Mexico. So I began to look for him. It took 7 years for me to finally find him. And during one of our many conversations, fearing I might never see him again, I blurted: Go to sleep knowing you are loved as we hung up the phone one evening. He too began to say it back to me as our conversations came to an end and that is when I decided to make him a quilt. Tucked into the underside of the quilt, the side that rests upon the skin, English at one end, Danish at the other, will be that phrase: Go to sleep knowing you are loved.
Right now I have finished cutting the pieces, have arranged the blocks to my satisfaction and I am in the process of sewing the top together. So far it looks like this:
 |
| For Christian |
And here is the phrase which each night, after I am long gone and have returned back home, he can remind himself that I am thinking of him, as he tucks himself into bed.
There is a lot that I sew into this quilt. I sew in the obvious, the love, the friendship, the years spent thinking, but I also sew into it the hope that his daughter will one day snuggle under the quit too. I sew into it knowing that I will be forever in Denmark with this quilt and that it is proof that Christian and I were real and once knew one another. It is a tangible witness to both our lives. Blue piping will be added to hold and bring the squares together and a barn type old red with a paisley print will be added to flesh it out.
It was purposefully made to look old and weathered as Christian spent his life as a farmer and knowing what I know about him, updated now, I know he is not in for the shiny and new.
 |
| A phrase of love and friendship |
I listen to the sounds he makes over the phone. I hear his feet shuffle across the floor, and I can hear the movement of his Adam's Apple as his sips from his wine. I can hear his frailty and I know time is drawing to a close.
I chose this pattern because in the description of the pattern the author wrote: Men respond to this design the most. You can't see it from the picture but once pieced together another set of smaller windmills become present between the larger blocked windmills. The quilt is unusual too because the blocks are placed on point and is sewn together horizontally. Keeping that straight has been nothing short of maddening. There is always a moment during quilting when one asks oneself: Why am I making this quilt?
When I think of my upcoming trip to Denmark I think of the quilts' journey more than of my own passage; I will simply be a courier of sorts.
Christian is the last person that I have known in my life that I want to see one more time. I have been the most fortunate of women to have had the chance to revisit those I have loved, for that one last look, that one last conversation. This quilt for Christian is my one last gift.
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