How to Make an American Quilt (15 page)

T
HE PHONE CALL
from Colorado came early in the morning: that Edie had run away in her ninth, dangerous month. She went to town to pick up something and never returned. Could one or both of them come at once?

Preston said that he would go and, curiously, Sophia was not overly worried about her child’s escape; was she being ignorant or callous or trusting? Perhaps it was something she would have done herself. No, Sophia acknowledged, she was too much like her own mother to attempt such an action, but she knew she would have wanted to do it. Some things were so difficult to know, but she felt it possible that Edie would turn up at Duff’s.

Duff, who has long since moved to Chicago, a childless, unmarried (“Christ, I’ve become a modern statistic, Mom”) career
woman. Sophia cannot help but imagine Duff in a smart suit, trading witticisms with William Powell or Cary Grant types; bright, feisty Duff.
I never could have been a career woman
, Sophia tells herself—
I mean, swimming isn’t a career
. Perhaps Duff will find the right fellow; Sophia hopes to god she does, because a manless life is a lonely one; Sophia feels it most acutely since Preston has gone to find Edie and still has not come home. He has not even been heard from. Sophia does not even know where he is.

She lives with Pres junior, who attends the local college, and every time he mentions leaving, Sophia blanches and is silent.

D
o not underestimate the importance of the carefully constructed border in the quilt. Its function is to keep the blocks apart while binding the entire work together both literally and thematically. But before you are ready with needle and thread, it is best to experiment with the layout of the blocks.

As you prepare to join your blocks, affix them to the dining-room wall or pin them to a set of drapes or arrange them upon the bed you share with your husband. You want to imagine how they will look once bound together. Think about what binds you to your husband and he to you. Marvel at the strength of that bond, which is both abstract and concrete, spiritual and legal.

A nineteenth-century Englishman said that marriages made in Heaven are subject to the will of the angel or the will of Heaven. And when a couple passes into the next world, they will become one angel. That is their fate, their destiny. This carries a certain appeal for you.

Consider the courtship of lovers. The way in which you imagined how the marriage would look before it took place. But perhaps you had other things on your mind before you tied the knot.

Think of how it all began with that first kiss.

Klimt’s surrendering golden kiss that shimmered on the canvas. The kiss of reverence, of desire. The kiss of the wave as it slaps the shore. Neruda wrote,
In love you have loosed yourself like sea water; I can scarcely measure the sky’s most precious eyes and I lean down to
your mouth to kiss the earth
. Your sun-kissed garden. The kiss that first united your body to his.

Meditate on the soul-kiss, which, prior to the twentieth century, meant that the souls of lovers were exchanged; mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue; transferred from one to the other as a great gift and act of faith. But the body grows lonely for its old soul (even as it loves the new one) and longs to have it returned. A quilt, though stitched together, will always be separate, individual parts.

You understand this loneliness of giving a part of yourself away to the man to whom you are wed, the man who is sometimes called away, the man who is seldom home. Though the exchange of souls carries with it the promise of return.

Take special care when arranging your blocks; be sympathetic to harmonies of color, fabric, and form. Do not be hesitant in devising new, different ways to link the patches to each other; what works for one quilt may not be successful for another. Keep this in mind should you find yourself doubting your design.

Use only the highest-quality thread when piecing your quilt together. Remember, your intention is to make the quilt last forever. Traditionally, quilts are stitched with white thread, but if you feel the addition of color would enhance the work, you are encouraged to do what you must, though it is a good idea to test for color fastness before you incorporate it into the work. Once bound, it is difficult to undo without reducing your finished quilt to separate and myriad pieces. Avoid embroidery yarn, which has been known to ravel and fray.

Watch for breakage.

You must decide between two main types of sashing:
one-strip sashing
or
piece sashing
. Sashing is the interior border between each block; the border encompasses the entire work—in much the same way that the marriage vow encompasses your life together. One-strip sashing is fabric all of one piece, while pieced sashing allows
for more than one fabric within the border. One-piece sashing is not for beginners. But, of course, you may be feeling particularly ambitious and lucky.

It is only in recent times that the bride has felt fortunate in marriage. Because she is encouraged to marry for love, not for family name or political alliance or wealth. No longer is she the unwilling spoil of war. The breathing tribute of a conquering tribe. No longer is she the stolen prize, crying for rescue, arms outstretched to her defeated kinsmen as she is spirited away. Yet, there are echoes of this theft today: the ritual bridal costume, the father relinquishing his daughter before the invited witnesses; the bride quietly leaving her own marital celebration while the guests continue to feast and dance. The cloister of the honeymoon, with its secret location that no one is privy to lest they track down and disturb the couple.

Many years ago, somewhere in Africa, the groom would prowl the bride’s home, as if to kidnap her. Her response was to cry for help, to only pretend to resist. In other places she was exchanged for movable property.

Study the colors of the blocks. Do not be hasty when deciding on a border, as you will have to live with this choice the rest of your quilt’s life. Some sashes and borders will be more complementary to the blocks than others. All sashing will divide, but some will enhance, bring out the best in the blocks, while others will dull the blocks, hide their original beauty. Marriage, too, can heighten the wife’s colors or consign her to listless hues and shades.

Often, there is no way to know until you are joined. All you really have to go on is the faith of the kiss.

As you stitch the top cloth to the batting to the back work, baste all three layers together—for security and accuracy. Do not skimp on these steps. A little effort now will save you a great deal of effort later. You know that marriage and friendship require effort.

Pioneer quilts were bound, front to back, by knots with dangling strings.

The rose is bound to the earth by the dangle of its roots. Without roots, you are milkweed to the wind, drifting from place to place and never really arriving. On your bad days, this thought keeps you in bed longer than you should be in the mornings. On your good days, you revel in the lightness of wind-drifting because you understand that for a plant to survive its soil (a house to remain in good repair; a friendship to remain close), it must be carefully tended. Which adds up to a good deal of attention paid; attention you are sometimes not prepared to give.

Still, you are drawn to the bond of friendship, the marriage pact. Drawn and repelled, as if you do not know the difference (the benefits and hardships) between leaving and staying.

A bride carries a floral bouquet as she travels down the aisle. Castilian girls wear white flowers at their bosom; Andalusian girls with their hair alive with wreaths of small roses; the Hawaiian girl gently tucks a hibiscus behind one ear; the right means “spoken for,” the left open to promises.

Your garden contains love-in-a-mist and honey-bear roses, which fill the air with an exceptionally sweet scent; only a few people are able to tolerate such a honey-sweetened atmosphere. And the climbing roses making their ascent toward sun and sky, bound at the root to the earth but longing for the sky.

Binding the quilt is not the same as laying the borders. Binding encompasses the entire work and may be achieved a couple of ways. You can turn the back edge forward. Be sure to leave a generous excess on the back work, enough to frame the top material. Or you can stitch on a separate edge. The separate edge is often recommended since it can be replaced if the quilt suffers from tension, stretching, age, or accident. Sometimes, a quilt can benefit from an attached border; can make the fusion whole yet relaxed.

The bride of one hundred years ago was often given a bridal friendship quilt on the day she was wed. Bringing something of value and use to the marriage, some little bit of personal property.

In America and England there were marriages known as “shift” or “closet” marriages, which protected a bride’s property from her new husband’s debtors. No one could show himself on the day after the wedding and say, with authority, to the newlyweds,
This is mine. This is what I am owed
. In the shift marriage the bride is systematically stripped to her undergarment as she approaches the altar, leaving her in a state of false poverty, as she stands, ashamed of her near nakedness, before her husband and minister. In the closet marriage, she is secreted in a closet with only her hand coming through a hole in the door to receive the ring.

The friendship quilt should have inked messages written upon its patches: wishing the woman well; good fortune for the newly married; quoting poetry or a wise saying or a bit of advice. Offering a warning or an admonition to be safe, to take care, and so long. Quoting scripture is common and not seen by the quilter as blasphemous.

Leaving or staying forces you to face the presence or absence of friends. The quilters will probably piece together a friendship quilt one day. It seems logical and correct. Historically it has its place for women who quilt. Peaking in popularity as American families pushed west, having already claimed the East, and friends said good-bye, certain not to meet again in this hard life. These journeys were uncertain, fraught with mystery. Manifest Destiny being all the rage in 1845.

You know, too, about pushing west and looking for fresh territory. You know about friendship and loss. Neruda has a second poem, written to his wife, regarding the earth but unlike the other earth poem, which relies on the sweetness of a kiss. This one says,
And each wound has the shape of your mouth
. But all you will
remember when he is gone and you are almost friendless, is the mention of the kiss.

When you are making the friendship quilt you are declaring love and faithfulness in the face of parting, perhaps forever.

Say it with your hands.

Then wave good-bye.

S
ometimes, Constance Saunders thinks, the worst thing about being a woman is having women friends. And the worst part about having women friends is that one must share so many confidences, except the one confidence Constance longs to share, which is the one about not being wild over the idea of women friends. Perhaps this life with Howell—this nomadic salesman drifting from town to city to town—has its moments of blessing. After all, if she is constantly being uprooted and moved, then she cannot truly make friends of any sort of depth, now can she?

It is not uncommon for Howell to sit across the table from her at supper, his eyes made slightly darker by his glasses, take her hand in his, and say, “I know this is a lonely life. All this moving makes it hard for you to have women friends. I never meant for you to not have any friends.”

But Constance only smiles a closed-mouth smile, squeezes his hand in reply, then: “I know I have said this before, How, and you resist believing it to be true, but I
am
happy. That is, I am not lonely. I knew what our lives would be when I married you. When I fell in love with you.” He looks her in the eye. “I’m fine,” she says. “Trust me.”

A
ND SHE WAS FINE
. Constance long ago quit believing in lucky accidents and favored a more fatalistic turn of mind. You meet the man who will become your husband and his profession becomes your
profession and maybe it is all for the best, in that respect. Her parents, of course, saw Howell Saunders as a timely lucky accident, since he married their Constance just shy of her thirty-third birthday. After all, she was the last child at home, unwed, and it seemed her prospects were getting slimmer and slimmer. Her two older brothers and three older sisters had all tried to introduce her around, “circulate” her socially, but to no avail—she simply did not seem to be interested. Her lack of interest appeared to extend to other women as well. Her parents worried that she was lonely.

What was strange about Constance was that she did not object to her single status; she accepted it in such a quiet way, it was puzzling. Sometimes her parents caught her gazing out the window or into the distance from the cool protection of the porch, indifferently sipping iced tea, and they were certain she was examining her solitary life. If only they had not been so old, they would not be as worried, but they could not live forever. They did not want to leave their baby alone in the world. They only hoped that when the time came, her siblings would allow her to remain in the family house.

The house was old and accommodating, set on five acres in White Plains, New York, with trees and deer and that large, oddly shaped swimming pool, which was used exclusively by Constance. Perhaps it is a mistake to be “comfortable” and to have children who will grow up to be comfortable as well. Perhaps it kills the motivation.

H
AD HER PARENTS ASKED HER
, as she sat on the porch, looking off into the distance, Constance would have told them that she was considering a day trip into Manhattan, taking in a museum or two; maybe purchase something frivolous and useless to adorn her attractive throat.

At other times, she contemplated getting her own flat or small
house; certainly she could afford it. She would swish the tea around in the tall glass. She might even get a roommate. Of course, it would have to be a woman, for form’s sake, but that did not interest her. Suddenly, her dream house was transformed under the touch of this phantom female roommate; things were being made “nice” and there was supper together and emotional confessions and tales of personal histories—no, she simply was not patient enough for such close contact.

Better to live with a man; they are so straightforward; except he would probably expect her to care for the household—even though they would not be married, or even lovers—and this did not interest her either. Her parents did not raise her that way. Despite the recent protests for women’s rights, despite the equal split in rent, she felt she would still be expected to cook and tidy up or supervise some other woman hired to cook and tidy up. No, that would not do. Women demanded your heart and men your body.

S
O HER MOTHER
and father would see Constance slowly rise from her chair on the porch, pulling the hair back from her neck (stuck there by the summer heat and humidity), leaving her half-empty glass by the base of the lawn chair.

T
HEN
H
OWELL APPEARED
(“I met him in the city, actually, somewhere near the Frick,” she told her parents) and courted her. And her days were passed with Howell, taking long drives and looking at country homes: pre-Revolutionary houses, converted barns, gatehouses; or city lofts; or two-story middle-class homes nestled in New Jersey; or the sad apartments of urban slum areas; or the elegant New York brownstones; or standing below tall apartment buildings, their heads tipped way back, as they tried to glimpse a penthouse or two.

When they had exhausted all available historic house and walking tours (occasionally repeating a particular favorite), they contacted realtors in various areas around Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, pretending to be potential buyers just so they could get inside and feel a more intimate sense of the home.

It was not uncommon for them to buy street food from the numerous city vendors and wander around downtown, investigating older landmarks like the Algonquin or the Chelsea, as well as newer, architecturally known high-rises.

One night, as they stood in the cold, well-tended garden of a late-nineteenth-century cottage in upstate New York, Howell said, “Marry me, Constance. We’ll move someplace out west, someday buying a house of our own, and our neighbors will say, ‘My God, they were living here before we moved here and that was twenty years ago and they looked ancient then.’ We’ll be one of those old couples that people admire without knowing them.”

Constance resisted pointing out to him that one out of every three marriages was currently ending in divorce and that it was becoming increasingly less fashionable these days to marry at all, even for someone who was thirty-three (though she felt that many would still think that she was lucky to find someone who wanted her at all and that it would be stupid to let him “get away”). Despite her awareness of these modern social trends, here in the mid-sixties, she said “Yes” anyway.