My granddaughter put me on Facebook in 2019. I still can't figure out the hashtags.
Now I want to tell y'all something and I hope it don't come out wrong.
My granddaughter set me up on here back in 2019. She said "Mama, folks need to see these quilts." I didn't believe her. I've been sewing since I was nine years old and for most of that time the only people who saw my work were people who came to the house, or the church, or a funeral. That was enough. I wasn't looking for anybody to clap.
Then a woman in Oregon bought one of my quilts off the internet and sent me a letter. A letter. Handwritten. She said it hung in her hallway and her grandbaby liked to touch the red pieces. That did something to me, I won't lie to you.
But here's what I can't get right. I'll spend three weeks on a quilt and post it and get eleven likes from my cousins. Then I'll post a scrap of fabric on the ironing board with the steam still coming up off it and that thing goes everywhere. People want to see the work being worked. They don't want the finished picture on the wall.
I don't understand it but I've stopped arguing with it.
What I'm asking is this. Does anybody else feel like the thing you're actually good at and the thing the internet wants from you are two different things? Because I'm 63 and I've decided I'd rather be a little overlooked than start sewing for the algorithm. But I'd like to hear from somebody further along than me.
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Nobody needed to clap, and that is exactly why the letter came. I do mosaic here in Thessaloniki, cut stone and smalti set by hand, and the same thing happened to me. For years only people who came to the workshop or a church saw the work. Then someone in another country sent me a photo of the piece in her kitchen, coffee cup beside it, and I understood finally who the work really belonged to once it left my hands. It is not about the hashtags. You set the pieces, and then you let go of them. That woman touching the red piece is the whole thing, right there.
That bit about the coffee cup beside it is the thing, isn't it. I do linocut here in Galway, carve the block, ink it, pull it by hand, and for years it was the same story, only the lads at the market or whoever wandered into the shed ever saw a print. Then a woman in Canada sent me a photo of one hanging in her kitchen with a boiled kettle just out of frame and I near went misty over a kettle. You spend the whole day fussing over a line you got wrong, and then some stranger hangs it where they actually live and it stops being yours. Setting the pieces and letting go, yeah. Took me a long time to learn that's not losing them.
A kettle, honey. I laughed and then I nearly teared up right here at this table. That's the whole thing, ain't it. It stops being yours. I made a quilt for my sister's girl years back, went and looked at it in her house one time and she had a dish towel draped over the corner of it. I wanted to fuss, and then I thought, well, that's a quilt living a life. A print in a kitchen with a kettle just out of frame is a print that got adopted.
You carve that block by hand and you know every line you wished was different. Same as me with a seam. But the woman in Canada ain't looking at your wrong line. She's looking at her wall.
Glad you set the pieces down long enough to say so. And Galway, my goodness. I've never been, but I hear it's green as anything.
You set the pieces, then you let go of them. Mm. I'm gonna write that on the back of one, honey, if you don't mind me borrowing it. Cutting stone by hand and setting it cold, that's a harder road than cloth, I know it is. But you said the thing I couldn't get the words around. It ain't ours once it leaves the house. It belongs to whoever's living in the same room with it. And a coffee cup beside it is about the highest compliment there is. That's not a gallery. That's a morning.