Another's Memory

Today is the reveal day for Fiberactions' memory-themed quilt...and here's mine. Pretty early on in the creation process I decided I wanted to build a quilt around old photographs...and I found these of my mother and grandmother (and other people I never knew), taken on the beach in Miami in 1935.

The quilt is called You Were A Girl Once, Too, and I meant it as a remembrance, on behalf of my mother, who in her late 80s has Alzheimer's, that she was once young, near the other end of her lifetime, before "life happened" and she became someone she may not have wanted to become.

The foundation fabric is one of my earliest printed heavy cottons that always had a faded look because the dyes weren't strong enough. But I knew eventually I'd find the right quilt for it. The central image is printed on muslin, the other two small photos are actually sewn onto cotton for stitching onto the quilt. The lace, cheesecloth, silk organza and poly sheer fabrics were all tea/coffee stained before digitally printing or stamping. Freshwater pearls, pearl beads and pearl buttons were added after quilting. And this piece was done completely by hand, no machine stitching at all, with running stitches and embroidery floss.

The most interesting part of making this quilt, though, is that I divorced my mother and the rest of my family about 10 years ago -- after my own virtual lifetime of trying to survive "the mother from hell" and all of the ramifications thereof. Although I had forgiven my mother in my heart, admittedly forgiveness is an ongoing process, and making this piece has softened the hard edges around the whole family fiasco and how it impacted my life.