Crazy Quilts

This blog is called MANYQUILTS, from the days when I had time to do a lot more quilting than I do now.

I was living hundreds and hundreds of miles from my kids and my friends, and turned loneliness into creative energy, if not creative product!


Above is an Amish quilt, "plain and simple" as it says in the book by the same name, written by Sue Bender.  Below you will find a "crazy quilt" made of favorite leftovers from old family clothing and other special projects. Bender's lovely book talks about How It Began:  "Twenty years ago I walked into Latham's Men's Store in Sag Harbor, New York, and saw old quilts like that. Odd color combinations. Deep saturated solid colors: purple, mauve, green brown, magenta, electric blue, red. Simple geometric forms: squares, diamonds, rectangles... I stared at the quilts. They seemd so silent: a 'silence like thunder.' ... The relationship of the individual parts to the whole, the proportion, the way the inner and outer borders reacted with each other was a balancing act between tension and harmony. ... How could pared-down and daring go together? How could a quilt be calm and intense at the same time? ... How opposite my life was from an Amish quilt. My life was a CRAZY QUILT, a pattern I hated. Hundreds of scattered, unrelated, stimulating fragments, each going off in its own direction, creating a lot of frantic energy. There was no overall structure to hold the pieces together. The Crazy Quilt was a perfect metaphor for my life.  A tug-of-war was raging inside me."  (Chapter 1, PLAIN AND SIMPLE, a Woman's Journey to the Amish, HarperSanFrancisco, 1989.)

I, too, love Amish quilts.  I stop in Harmony, MN, every chance I get, just to look and feel and wish.  Once when Conrad went to an Amish farm about lumber, I was invited inside the house to see a world of brown and gray, except for the glorious quilts that were hanging on every wall in various stages of completion.  It was stunning.  No electricity, no gas stoves, no vacuum cleaners, no dish washers, no indoor toilets.  A world of hard work and a world of stunningly beautiful quilts. A world of contrasts.  "Plain and Beautiful."

I often wonder what my life would be like if I had grown up in that Amish community.  Hard, I think.  Backbreaking work.  Different problems to deal with.  I don't think that women make their own decisions in that world. I don't think that life would be very simple.

My mother once made me a crazy quilt, lovingly stitched from clothing I recognized from my childhood.  Easter dresses. Spring coats. The first gathered skirt I ever made as a 4H project. Old aprons she used to wear in the kitchen. Indeed, it was "hundreds of scattered, unrelated, stimulating fragments, each going off in its own direction."  But those "unrelated" fragments were related! Each one brought back a warm and wonderful memory of a time gone by that shaped who I am today.

My life is a crazy quilt.  I used to wish it were Plain and Simple.  But it isn't.  I'm the age that Paul McCartney sang about:  "Will you still need me, Will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?" Every day brings its new challenges and problems. Students come to talk about their classes, their hopes, their worries. My colleagues wonder what changes await. My children call to get reassurance that whatever happens, "somehow it will turn out all right" even if it's not what they'd planned.  Retirement funds dwindle with the economy.  We all wonder if we'll have health care when we're old!  So, I've grown used to this crazy life. It just isn't plain and simple.  It's a Crazy Quilt.

I think I'll start making one this weekend!