My granddaughter washed a quilt I made in 1979 and I nearly lost my religion
Honey. She meant well. She saw it on the back of the chair, said it smelled like cedar, put it in the machine on gentle and I came in the kitchen to find it spinning.
That quilt is the first one I ever pieced by myself. 1979, scraps of my daddy's work shirts and a green dress my mother wore to my sister's wedding. The red in it has gone to a soft brown now. Nothing in the world matches that brown, and you can't buy it back.
She pulled it out and it held together, thank the Lord, no seams gave. But it came out looking tired in a way it wasn't tired before. I stood there holding it and my eyes filled up and she felt awful and I had to put my arms around her and tell her it was just cloth. It is not just cloth.
Now I'm sitting here wondering if I should stitch a little tag on the back of the ones that matter. Just a line on muslin, hand wash, cold, lay flat. Feels like talking to people who aren't here yet.
Any of you all put washing instructions on your work? Or do you just let the thing go where it goes.
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Ah now, that's a heart-stopper. The machine on gentle is still the machine, like, it doesn't know what it's got in there.
I know that brown you're on about. My mother had a dress that went that exact colour after years of washing and I've tried mixing it for a print a dozen times and never got it. It's not a colour you can buy because half of it is time.
Only consolation I can offer is that your daddy's shirts and your mother's dress got another go at it in that quilt. It survived a spin cycle after 45 odd years, so whatever you stitched into it back in '79 was solid work. Hope your granddaughter isn't too cut up about it either, she was trying to do a good turn, and that's not nothing.
"Half of it is time." Mm. That's the whole truth right there, and I'm going to be thinking on that for a while. You're right too that it ain't a color, it's a record of everything that touched it.
And you know, I hadn't looked at it that way about my daddy's shirts getting another go. That helps more than you know. My granddaughter cried harder than I did, poor thing, and I told her the quilt forgave her before I did. Still working on my part.
Forty-five years and it held. My grandmother's stitches are in that lining, so I reckon some of that strength wasn't even mine.