Had a woman pull out my grandmother's quilt at the church bazaar and tell me she could machine-quilt it faster

Went to the church bazaar Saturday to help sell pies for the youth group, and a woman stopped by the quilt table. Picked up one my grandmother made back in the sixties, before she passed, turned it over, looked at my stitches, and said "honey, you know they make machines that could do this in a weekend."

I just smiled and said "yes ma'am, they sure do." Didn't tell her that machine never had my grandmother's hands in it.

People see the wobble in the stitches and think it's a flaw. That wobble is the whole point. That's where my grandmother's elbow rested, where she was thinking on something, where her fingers held the needle for four decades. A machine can't put that in.

I aint mad at her, she didn't know. But I stood there holding my grandmother's work and I felt that cold little snap in my chest, the one you get when somebody hands you a thing that's holy and calls it slow.

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Niall Doherty·5h

Oh sure, and she thought she was being helpful, didn't she. God love her. There's a woman who's never pulled an edition where the block's got a nice crack in it and everyone tells you it's ruined, but you know it's just now got a soul.

I carve hares. Same feckin hare for years now, and you'd think I'd have it perfect by this stage. But every print comes out a touch different because I'm not the same man I was last Tuesday when I cut the first one. That's the whole game. The wobble is the hand remembering. A machine'll give you a perfect stitch every time and none of them's worth a damn because nobody was thinking on anything while they were made.

You said it right and you said it calm. I'd have been standing there with my jaw on the floor and then gone home and told the wife about it for three days. Fair play to you. Grandmother's hands in every one of those stitches, and that woman walked past it without seeing a thing. Her loss.

Sol Reyes·4h

"the wobble is the hand remembering", that got me right in the chest, friend. That's exactly it. Every line I draw that's a little off is where I was standing that day, what was weighing on me, whether my coffee was cold. A machine gives you perfect and gives you nothing. That hare of yours has a million different souls in it and that's the whole miracle. Keep cutting it, keep letting it change.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4h

"the hand remembering," that's exactly what I meant to say and you said it clearer than I could've, friend. That wobble is a diary nobody else can read. A machine just makes a line. A hand leaves a trail.

And that hare sounds like it's alive, the way you talk about it. A million souls in one little creature, that's the whole gospel of making something by hand, right there. You keep letting it change. The minute it stops changing, it's dead. I'd love to see it sometime if you ever feel like sharing.🙂

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4h

Now you said it, baby. "The hand remembering", that's the Lord's own truth, and I'm gonna hold onto that. A machine's got no memory, no mama, no Sunday afternoons. It's just... going. But that block with the crack, that's been someplace. That's lived.

And you carving hares all these years, mm-mm, I know exactly what you mean. My grandmother used to say a quilt ain't finished till it's got a mistake in it, because that's where the person shows up. Perfect's for people who never made a thing in their life. Keep on with your hares, honey. They're lucky to have your hands. ❤️

Niall Doherty·5h

Ah now, you handled that better than I would've. I'd have been sorely tempted to say "and sure they make machines that crochet too, but you don't see anybody hanging a Hoover over the mantelpiece."

But honestly I know exactly the feeling. I carve hares, right, same bloody hare over and over for years now. And every so often someone tells me they could get a print of it done on one of those apps, or find a nicer one on Etsy for a tenner. And sure, they could. They absolutely could. And it'd be perfect, and it'd be nothing.

Your grandmother's wobble is the whole story. You could frame that quilt and hang it like a painting, honestly. The machine can do it in a weekend, but a machine never sat by the fire at midnight thinking about something, with her elbow resting on the cloth. That's not a flaw, that's a signature. Sure the Pope signs his letters but it's the handwriting that tells you it's him.

Margaret Hsu·4h

That Hoover line is going to stay with me, I'll say that.

But the hares are the thing I want to sit with. I paint botanical specimens, and I have done the same water lily, the same rose, more times than I can count. People have said to me, not unkindly, that they could photograph it more accurately. Of course they could. The photograph would be flawless and entirely forgettable.

What I have come to understand is that the wobble is not the flaw, it is the signature. It is where the hand made a decision the machine never had to make. My old teacher used to say that a live line carries the weather of the day it was drawn. Your grandmother's stitches carry hers, and your hares carry yours. That is not something an app can replicate, and it is not something to apologise for.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·3h

"A live line carries the weather", now that right there is a sentence I could hang on my wall. And you're right, you're absolutely right. The photograph tells you what something looks like. The hand tells you what it was like to be alive looking at it.

I never thought about painting that way, but I bet you that water lily you've done a hundred times, the last one holds every one of the ones before it. Same as my grandmother's quilt holds every quilt she ever made. That's the wonder of it, isn't it. The machine just makes another one. The hand makes the same thing new every time.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4h

Ha! "Hanging a Hoover over the mantelpiece", now I'm gonna be chuckling on that one all week, child. You've got a good tongue on you.

But that thing you said about the hares, that's the truth right there. "It'd be perfect, and it'd be nothing." Mm-mm. That's the whole of it, isn't it? Perfect and nothing. A machine can give you flawless, but flawless don't hold nobody's story. Your hare's got years of you in it, the same way my grandmother's block's got her leaning in on a Sunday afternoon, humming something, thinking on the sermon.

And that Etsy fella, God bless him, his hare's got his own years in it. That's the beautiful part, we all got our own wobble, and the Lord don't ask us to copy nobody else's.

Keep carving, baby. Same hare, every year, and every one of 'em's a different animal because you're a different you.