In 2012, my eldest sister got married to someone who, like her, is left-handed, Jewish, vegan, and loves purple. Also, he translates Japanese text into English for a living and we grew up in Hawaii, greatly influenced by Japanese food, culture, and people. It was meant to be. The wedding took place in a Japanese garden; she wore lavender and gold; he wore a purple tie. To be with her new husband, my sister moved from golden California to frozen Vermont.
I knew I wanted to make her a quilt as a wedding gift, both to keep her warm and for their shared home. I had never made a full-sized quilt before and had always thought a nine-patch seemed the most doable for a beginner. After hours of searching out purple nine-patches for inspiration, I found it: a beautiful children's quilt with nine different purples and a grey theme:
Someone else was so inspired by this design, she made her own copy using rose and I loved that one, too:
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| Purple Nine-Patch Baby Quilt, by Jennifer LGB (All Rights Reserved) |
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My super-quilter friend Jessica recommended the perfect sewing machine (Husqvarna/Viking
Emerald 118), told me to get a
quilter's foot (which keeps the seam at 1/4" and is a lifesaver), helped me pick out fabrics at
Stonemountain and Daughter, and suggested mapping out the quilt in Excel (go public health nerds!). Then came cutting out squares. Lots and lots of squares. Then sewing them into blocks of two, then strips of three, and playing around with different combinations to make 36 nine-patch blocks. (According to Wikipedia, in Jewish numerology, "the number 18 stands for 'life,' because the Hebrew letters that spell
chai, meaning 'living,' add up to 18. Because 36 = 2×18, it represents 'two lives'"--coming together.)
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| (One tip my friend showed me was to sew blocks together so they ended up on a kind of clothes line and then snip them apart afterwards. This saved tons of time.) |
I didn't plan exactly what the whole thing would look like; I just made a bunch of blocks using different combinations I liked and ended up with 20 of the combination above, which I put along the outside border, and 12 of an alternate pattern, which I put along the inside ring blocks around a four-square centerpiece.
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| Purple nine-patch quilt top |
I realized after making the borders that I wanted the centerpiece to be something special, but because I hadn't planned the design in advance, I had to make the centerpiece out of whatever squares I had leftover. I spent hours rearranging the remaining squares, alternately laughing and kicking myself at my lack of
forethought, and channeling Tim Gunn (from Project Runway)'s perennial advice to "make it work" before arriving at the asymmetrical design (below). This process embodied the whole experience, which took over a year not because I spent that long sewing, but because at each step (from buying the fabric, to cutting out squares, to piecing together strips, to making nine-square blocks, to sewing on borders), I had to face my own fears: I didn't know what I was doing, it would show, and it wouldn't be good enough.
To tame my "monkey mind," I thought of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of including intentional flaws in a mandala as a reminder of life's imperfection (and the related Japanese design concept of
Wabi-sabi). By "making it work," I was able to give myself compassion for not being perfect and continue with what I had instead of clinging to some ideal of what might have been.
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| Purple nine-patch quilt centerpiece |
Once the cover was done, I decided to have the layers quilted together professionally with a Japanese wave pattern, something I couldn't easily do by hand. I found a long-arm quilter (Melissa, of
A Fine and Fair Stitch) in Berkeley, and handed over the cover and backing, along with a wave quilting pattern I had found online. She suggested alternating small and large waves, and did a beautiful, stunning job:
Next came the binding. After reviewing from among a few alternatives that Melissa provided, I decided on a pattern reminiscent of Van Gogh's
Starry Night painting, which added a slightly psychedelic feel. I learned how to attach the binding and, for the first time, properly miter the corners, through a great
online class (also provided to me as a gift by Jessica, without whom I
could not have possibly finished this quilt). Watching the video
explaining how to do the binding was a joy in itself (not to mention
super useful in being able to fast forward and rewind the instructions
when I did it wrong over and over again). I have such incredible
admiration for older women whose earnestness is not coated in
twenty-five layers of irony.
Finally, after more than a year of procrastination, joy, self-doubt, self-compassion, needlepricks, craft-time warp zones, Savage Love podcasts, and words of encouragement from friends, the quilt was done! And even though it ended up looking very different than my original vision, I had to admit it looked great.
My mom--whose standards are impeccable-- loved it...
As did my sister and her husband (shown here in Vermont saying "shaka")...
In the end, I didn't need to worry about the quilt not being good enough. Instead, I could let the quilt communicate the love and intention I'd extended first to myself and then to my sister and her husband, and by extension, to all people learning to love themselves--and their partners--beautiful and imperfect as they are.
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