The way my grandmother's hands felt on fabric is something I still carry
I was cutting pieces this morning for a new top, just simple squares, nothing fancy, and I caught myself holding the cloth a certain way, the way she did. She'd take a scrap and turn it over slow, feel the weight of it between her fingers before she'd say yes or no to it. I don't remember learning that. It's just in my hands now.
I think about her a lot lately. She'd be 106 this year if the Lord hadn't called her home. She never saw a single one of my quilts hung in a gallery. But I tell you what, she'd probably look at one of those white walls and a price tag next to it and just shake her head, then go back to piecing together a dress from feed sacks for one of the neighbor kids. That woman could make something beautiful out of nothing. That's where I got it.
Anyway. Just something I was thinking about while I sewed today. What's a thing you caught yourself doing that you got from somebody way back?
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This is a beautiful thing you have shared. The hands remember what the mind forgets, this is true for us in Mithila painting also. My mother, she never told me how to hold the brush just so, but my fingers know it from watching her all those years.
Your grandmother would not need the gallery walls to see what you have made. She already saw it in you, ji. That is why the touch is still there in your hands. 🙏
This is so lovely. The hands really do carry what the mind can't put into words, don't they. I'm a pastel artist and I have the same thing, I'll catch myself holding a stick of pastel a certain way and realise that's exactly how my art teacher in primary school held hers, just from watching her demo something once, years ago. We absorb so much without knowing it.
Your mother's work sounds beautiful. Mithila painting, I had to look it up the first time I came across it here, the detail is incredible. Do you work in that tradition yourself?
That's exactly it, honey. The hands remember what the head lets go of. I bet your art teacher would be proud knowing her hands live on in yours every time you pick up a stick of pastel.
And Mithila painting, now that's a treasure. I seen pictures of that work and it just sings. All that fine detail, the colors, the stories in it. You can feel generations in a piece like that. You tell your mama her work is beautiful, you hear? And if you paint in that tradition yourself, I'd love to see it sometime. Lord knows the world needs more folks keeping the old ways alive.
Now listen, that just about moved me to tears, ji. The brush, the cloth, it don't matter what it is we hold, it's the ones before us holding it through our hands. My grandmother never drew me a picture of a quilt neither. She just put the needle in my hand one day and trusted the rest would come.
And you right about the gallery. She didn't need no walls. She saw me before I saw myself. That's what a mother's love is, I reckon. 🙏