The quilt market out here is something else right now

Y'all, I been selling quilts my whole life, church bazaars, word of mouth, folks stopping by the house. Never needed much more than that.

But my granddaughter got me on Instagram a few years back, and I tell you what, the folks I've met through there... mm. People from England, from Japan, from California, wanting a piece of what I do. I sold a quilt last month to a woman in Paris. Paris, France. She saw a picture I took on my kitchen floor and paid more than I used to ask for a whole summer's worth of craft shows.

And I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. The Lord's been good. But there's something funny about it, these folks paying top dollar for what my grandmother did out of a flour sack because that's what she had. They call it "art" now, and I guess it is. But it was art then too, wasn't it?

Anyway. I'm still figuring out what to make of it. Grateful, but figuring.

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Mateo Serrano·4w

this hit different. i get what you're saying about the gratitude but also the... rest of it.

i sell at markets here in valencia and there's something about the direct exchange, they pick it up, turn it over, we talk about the piece. instagram brings people from everywhere but it also makes everything feel flat sometimes. like the thing itself matters less than whether the photo's good.

but then someone from the other side of the world wants what you made with your hands. that's real too. it's just a different kind of real.

your quilts found their way to paris off a kitchen floor photo. that's actually insane when you think about it. in a good way. mostly.

Lukas Brandt·4w

You've got that right about the photo flattening it. I spend half my life trying to get a decent shot of a painting that's two metres across and made of oil and wax, layers you can only really see when the light hits it at the right angle, surface you'd need to touch to understand. And Instagram turns it into a rectangle on a phone. That's the medium though, not a complaint.

But the other half of it, someone in another country wanting the thing anyway, having only seen the rectangle. That's not nothing either. The painting travels, it hangs somewhere I'll never stand in front of it, and that's its own kind of life.

Different kind of real, you said it genau.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4w

That's exactly it. You put your whole self into it, the surface of it, and nobody gets to see that but you and the person who ends up living with it. I don't know if that's sad or just the way it works. Maybe a little of both.

But I tell you what, the ones who buy it anyway, having only seen the flat of it, they're trusting something. And that counts for something too.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4w

You said it, baby. That flat feeling, that's the word right there. I can hold a quilt in my hands and tell you the whole story of it, where the fabric came from, who it was for, what I was praying on when I pieced it. But a photograph can't do that. It's just... a picture.

But then I think about my grandmother. She never saw nobody from Paris buying her work. Never saw nobody past the county line wanting it. And here I am. So I'm grateful. I just got to keep trusting that the person on the other end of that sale feels something true through the picture, even if they can't touch it.

You keep doing what you're doing at them markets in Valencia. That face-to-face is sacred. We need both kinds, I reckon.

Niall Doherty·4w

Ah now, that's the thing isn't it. The kitchen floor photo to Paris, sure that's mad altogether, but I get it entirely. I've had the same yoke happen with prints. Used to sell at the Saturday market in Galway, eighty quid for a linocut framed, and you'd be happy enough. Then someone in Tokyo finds you through Instagram and suddenly you're sending a hare across the world and the postage costs more than what you'd have charged for the whole thing ten years ago.

There's something in it that's lovely and a bit unsettling both at once though, isn't there? The part you stopped typing on. Because the folks who'd come to the church bazaar, they knew what a quilt was worth in hours and in keeping warm. They'd run a thumb along the stitching and know. And this woman in Paris, she's buying the idea of it as much as the thing itself. Nothing wrong with that either, the Lord works in mysterious ways and so does the algorithm, but it's a different transaction. Two different worlds meeting on your kitchen floor.

Glad for ye anyway. And fair play to the granddaughter for getting you on there. Hope you charged the Paris woman properly. They'll pay it. 🙂

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·4w

Bless your heart, you said it right there. That's the part that's hard to put words to, isn't it. I'm grateful, I truly am, the Lord's opened a door I never even knew to knock on. But there's something about somebody picking up a quilt in their hands, feeling the weight of it, knowing I cut every piece on that same kitchen table I've had forty years... that's a different kind of knowing than a screen can give you.

And I think about the women before me who pieced on scraps because that's all they had, and now somebody in Paris hangs what I do on a wall. I don't know how to hold both those things at once, except to just keep sewing and let the Lord sort the rest.

Your hare sounds lovely, by the way. Hope Tokyo treats it kindly.