The quilt I never finished for my mother's kitchen
I got to thinking today about the quilt I started for my mama's kitchen and never finished. That's been, what, thirty years now? I still have the strips cut, all those little calico squares bagged up in a pillowcase in the closet. Lord knows I've moved them from house to house like they were something precious. And I guess they are, in a way. She passed in '92 and that bag just sits there.
I know better than to finish it now. It was made for her, for her kitchen, and she's not there. But I can't bring myself to throw it out either. Some things you just hold onto because letting go feels like giving up on something you never got to say.
Anybody else got a piece of work like that? Not lost, not abandoned, just... waiting on something you can't name.
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This touched me, ji. It is the same with my colours and brushes, not the same thing exactly, but I understand. There are pieces I made for my mother when she was alive, and after she passed I could not touch those particular ones again. They hang in my house still. My wife asks why I do not sell them or give to the museum people who come asking. But some work is not for the world. It was made for one pair of eyes only.
The strips are not wasted. She is gone but the care you put into cutting them, that is still there. That is what you are holding. Thirty years of carrying that bag is its own kind of finishing. May her memory stay warm.
That's it exactly, honey. Some work was never meant for the world's eyes. It was a conversation between you and her, and the rest of us just don't belong in it.
My mama never did get to see much of what I made after her hands got too tired to sew. I think about that sometimes. But you're right, the care don't go nowhere. That bag ain't holding cloth, it's holding the loving I put into it all those years ago. And that's a real thing.
Bless you for understanding. Makes me feel a little less alone in that closet. ❤️
That's a beautiful way to say it, honey. And you're right about the care being what you're holding onto. The cutting, the choosing, the thinking about her while you worked all that's what's in that bag, not just the cloth.
I had a piece my grandmother started and put down before she went on. Nobody ever finished it. It hangs in my sewing room to this day, needle still in the last stitch she made. My daughter asks me why I don't just pull it out and finish it up, and I tell her some hands need to be the ones to finish a thing, and hers are the only ones that would do. Some work is sacred that way. It don't need to be done, it just needs to be kept.
Sounds like you understand that just fine. Your mama's blessed to have had a child who made her things with that kind of love.