Summer Poem

Now the sweet, green leaves of summer

greet me each day. In this country,

the wind blows clouds to the far horizon,

and the sun shines every day.

Those fat, full heads of peonies droop

down to the ground, and marigolds and poppies

flourish. Clematis vines flower like spreading hands,

their purple and white equally intense

in their last gasp before the heat

of full summer, remind me

of the turn of seasons,

of the end of days.

I'm always surprised by poetry -- as if the only time I do write poetry is during April, National Poetry Month. But last year, I noticed I was forgetting the details of the turn of seasons, when one type of flower finished its bloom, and the next flourished, when the birds came, and when they left.

Yesterday, I helped my dear daughter and son-in-law with a garage sale. She wanted to let go of clutter, to simplify. Leda is now one-year-old, just before that first step when she walks, her words a jumble of sound that makes sense to her and only sometimes to us.

Yesterday Allen took me to a fabric sale where thousands of bolts of fabric were being sold at $2/yard. Two very large rooms at the County Fairgrounds were full of tables, bolts lined against the wall, with hundreds of quilters shopping. On the first day of the sale, the lines stretched out about half a mile, and shoppers waited about two hours to pay for their finds. Today was quiet, but so many choices. I cannot imagine ever possessing this much fabric, even though I love quilting and have far too many projects awaiting my attention. And yet I brought home some lovely new fabrics, bright tropical fishes, Native American themes, and 144 9-patch squares all in blue  (I'll try to post a pic later). I now have 4 charity quilts at the planning stage and those blue squares will grace my bed at some point . . . 

Yesterday also, I had what was so lovingly described in My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a 'bibopsy'. Just a small removal of a mole. Nothing serious expected, but it was a little sign. I've downsized once. I'm not sure I'm ready to downsize again.

Morning Lion (Camp 2012)

Q is for Quilting . . .

Grandmother’s Quilt

She pieced this Double Wedding Ring quilt

for my aunt on her third wedding.

The quilt lasted longer than the marriage,

tossed in the back of the car for the dog to sleep on,

and so it came to me, sun-bleached and worn,

with all the fabrics of the 1950s,

calicos, ginghams, the binding torn,

my grandmother and aunt long gone.

I put the queen-sized quilt away,

well-wrapped in a pillowcase

for a decade or two.

Now I sit mending that binding,

turn needle and wonder

where I will find those well worn fabrics

to patch each missing square.

In the morning, my grandmother’s work

greets me, her arthritic hands are now my hands,

and I make quilts for my daughter.

My Grandmother's Quilt c. 1955 (Camp 2013)

Read what others have written for the A to Z Challenge and NaPoWriMo.

Sunday night musing . . .

August. Too darn hot! It's nearly 8 pm, time for a walk up the hill, through a quiet suburban neighborhood, past a tidy row of houses, too tidy for me, and then along a wetland where the ducks will gather on a greenish pond, tails up as they bob heads down for dinner. Each night the moon has risen a little fuller. Maybe tonight the moon will be transparent and a cooling breeze will lift my spirits.

Writing only happens very early in the morning, and so far, I've reached this week's goals for editing Years of Stone; I plan to finish the final section in the coming week. But I didn't touch the short stories at all, though I did find a wonderful story about a quilt made in 1887 (or so).

A tailor in Helena, Montana, sewed this hexagonal quilt with scraps from men's suits, ties, women's gowns both from the upper class and ladies of the evening. The quilt is gorgeous -- paper pieced, with yellowing newspapers never cut out, a few confirming the date of the quilt. Here's a picture of this treasured quilt. I want to write about this unfinished project with bits of cloth from so many lives, all intersecting in unexpected colors and patterns. 

What do quilting and writing have in common? Tenacity! A sense of purpose. A belief that we can make something that will be of use, perhaps of pleasure. Picking up a needle is soothing, the skills to quilt every bit as complicated as those needed to write. Quilts and words can comfort. The process of writing and quilting is every bit as rewarding as the final project; both are often made to give away.

Goals for the coming week, by August 13:
1. Finish Section 3 edits for Years of Stone.
2. Finish final edits for The Mermaid Quilt.
3. Read other participants in ROW80 and persevere.
4. Send out ONE story to an online market.

May your own writing go well.

Q is for Quilting . . .

Now you know it. Quilting and writing are my two, slightly obsessive passions. So, how could a quilt possibly figure in a historical novel set in the 1840s in Van Diemen's Land? I came across the story of Kezia Hayter, a rather intrepid young woman recruited by the famous Quaker Elizabeth Fry to accompany a group of women prisoners transported to, you guessed it, Van Diemen's Land.

Elizabeth Fry (with her committee of concerned Quakers) visited the women in prison, comforted them, prayed with them, and before these over 175 women left, the Quakers brought each woman a bag of sewing notions and fabric for the long journey, that their hands might be usefully employed. Their ship, the Rajah, captained by Charles Ferguson, sailed south, and somehow these women created a quilt to present to the Government on arrival in April 1841.

The first miracle is that the quilt was finished. Parts, true, are clumsily sewn. Not all of the women knew how to sew. Certainly the dark, cramped conditions and the constantly rocking ship added to the difficulty of sewing. But the final quilt -- made of 2,815 pieces -- is a marvel of quilting, applique, and embroidery.

The quilt was duly presented to Lady Jane Franklin with a touching hand sewn announcement:

And then the quilt disappeared, only to be rediscovered in England and returned to Tasmania in 1989. It now resides in the National Gallery of Australia. The Rajah Quilt is taken out just once a year so that visitors can appreciate this artifact that these nameless women created -- beauty where none existed, perhaps hope to some. But their work is remembered, and I would very much like to see this quilt for myself. Perhaps one day.


Read more about the Rajah Quilt at the National Gallery of Australia or about Kezia Hayter and her captain, Charles Ferguson.

#175: Osha's Star . . .

At 96, she remembers very clearly
the colors she chose, where the quilt was made
and when. Her fingers outline the pattern,
one of her own making.
She smoothes the coverlet
and notes a torn stitch that needs repair.
I start a fabric copy,
stitch and turn and stitch again,
making something new from this old quilt.
We talk of days far in the past, her life on
the oil fields of Michigan in the 1930s,
what the children said when they were small.
She smiles and remembers
and folds the quilt away.



Sunday Scribblings' prompt for something "new" seemed to fit this afternoon of talk, for this pattern will stay in my family now.

The Rajah Quilt . . .

This morning's research introduced me to a treasure -- the Rajah Quilt, hand sewn by women prisoners as they were transported by sailing ship, the Rajah, from the Pentonville Prison in England, to Hobart, Australia on a 5-month journey in 1841. The quilt, lost for decades and recovered just 20 years ago, is shown publicly just once a year at the National Gallery of Australia.



I can imagine these 180 women aboard the Rajah, a sailing cargo ship. For the next five months, they endured crowded conditions, were buffeted by storms, and yet they created this quilt. Each had been given a personal bag filled with sewing materials and two pounds of cut fabric scraps, granted by the Quaker group, the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners, so the women would find "industrious work" during the voyage. They sailed into the unknown, from one prison to another.

The quilt was presented to Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the governor of Tasmania (Australia), John Franklin, the famed Artic explorer, later lost in his quest to find the Northwest Passage (from Greenland).

I'm seeing a swirl of links to my novel-in-progress set in the Orkneys, Scotland, in the 1840s. Captain Ferguson of the Rajah took shelter from a storm in Stromness. He later married Kezia Heyter, the young woman sent by Elizabeth Fry to accompany the female prisoners. Some articles say Heyter was a matron; some say she was simply a passenger. I've thought of Elizabeth Fry as well, for she was a fearsome reformer, though she died in 1845. Yet her relationship to Kezia as mentor is an interesting one.

I'm still struggling to understand marriages in the upper class; no better model could be had than that of Lady Jane Franklin to John Franklin, both explorers, both independent. She wrote often to Elizabeth Fry, yet there is tension among historians as to her actual role in helping the female prisoners. But the good materials are all in the collections of the National Library of Australia. No time to order interlibrary loan. Sigh. So now, enough research! Back to the writing.

140 Tradition . . .

This week's Sunday Scribblings' prompt asks us to write about tradition.

When I was 15, my grandmother sewed a quilt for each grandchild, hand piecing the tops despite her arthritic hands. Mine was vividly colored, Grandmother’s Flower Garden. I loved that quilt.

I have read of quilts made to mark the way along the Underground Railway, but this may be a combination of memory and myth. Log Cabin, Bear’s Paw, Ocean Waves, to me, these names spoke of our history. I could imagine women quilting in cabins across the plains and in the Pacific Northwest; some quilts evoke the home country left behind (Irish Chain, Dresden Plate), or mark the poignant passing of one generation to the next (Wedding Ring, Grandmother’s Flower Garden), or inspired by the Bible (Jacob’s Ladder, Rose of Sharon).

Everywhere we travel, I look for quilts. They speak to me of similar dreams and love of color, history, and family. In Egypt, elaborate quilts are still made in an open air market that once were traded along the Silk Route. African warriors wore Fulani stars quilted into their cloth armor for protection. From Japan, we see quilt patterns with dragonflies, fans, lanterns, kimonos, and Torii gates. From Alaska, quilt designs highlight the wilderness with bears, eagles, mountains, trout and the forest. And in museums I see quilting and appliqué that women have created for thousands of years to embellish their clothing, blankets, and wall hangings.

Tradition

I’ve often been asked why I quilt.
Sometimes my hands hurt
from cutting fabric
as the scissors slice through bright colors.
Why would any one dedicate
so many months to make something
that can be so easily bought?

I first began to quilt
in memory of my grandmother;
her stitches held together my family in ways
I couldn’t foresee. And when I left home,
I took her quilt with me.

Now I appliqué the edges,
turn the fabric again and again
into a pattern, inventing as I go,
the curved edges turning
into flowers light and vivid.

I think about the person I love as I stitch,
the person who will one day lie beneath this cover,
sometimes dreaming, sometimes weeping,
perhaps comforted by this quilt
that I have made.

When I am no longer here,
for that day comes,
perhaps who made the quilt
is not so important.
This quilt may comfort a child or two at nap time
or be put on the back seat of a car for the dogs.
My hands are content as I remember
my grandmother.



I’m just finishing the last bit of binding on this flower quilt for my cousin, adapted from patterns in Joyce M. Schlotzhauer, The Curved Two Patch System. You can click on the image to see the quilt more clearly.

#22 For Rachel

Today I walked inside a church
hung with quilts of many colors, some
stitched by hand, some appliquéd.
Intricate lines dissect
what once was necessary,
now a work of art.

My hands
take on this work,
turning fabric wheels
into flowers, a vision of traditions
connecting me to you,
you who stitch lines straighter
than I ever will,
dear daughter.