In the doorway, the artful Dutchman didn’t move. Harry knew better than to move. Hannah was wrong, Eddie knew. There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.
A Widow for One Year
John Irving
A College Graduation quilt!
Graduation season is quickly approaching. My queue usually fills for graduation by mid-March, and this year I already have four graduation quilts waiting to be made and a few others awaiting meetings with clients. If you want a graduation quilt this season, then get on my list!
Graduation season is always so exciting and bittersweet, and last season a parent reminded me, as I was working on her daughter’s quilt, that the process is a cathartic one. She said going through shirts with me, picking fabric, and discussing designs brought back so many memories and punctuated the end that graduations signal. For her, she had already sent her daughter off to college–we made her quilt during her daughter’s freshman year of college. My client said working with me to make the quilt really helped smooth and nurture her process of letting go.
The front of her daughter’s double-sided quilt!
Graduations themselves are bittersweet for graduates and parents. They mark the end of something, while nodding to the uncertain future. Old ties are loosened and newness abounds, and graduation quilts reflect that friction.
As a mother I have two high school graduations completed, and I am enjoying my new freedoms and the boys’ bright futures. My oldest wasn’t interested in a t-shirt quilt, really–I made him one in middle school, and I just prepped my youngest’s t-shirts for his quilt. He picked out his shirts, and he helped me pick fabrics. I think my personal process is less cathartic because he left home for his Senior year of high school to attend UNCSA, but I was reminded, as I worked on his shirts and layout recently, of the dichotomy of emotions inherent in graduation season.
I made her daughter a bear, too, and it is pictured here on top of the quilt.
With both my boys in college, I see and feel the joy and expectations of the future, and I am so pleased to be able to work with parents feeling the pain and anticipation of graduation. I read often for catharsis that I don’t even know I need until I find it in a text, and I hope my graduation orders help my clients find cleansing catharsis, too. They will have a quilt that embodies so many memories and emotions, and a quilter cannot ask more from a quilt.
The back of her daughter’s quilt was filled with pictures I printed to fabric and hand appliqued “confetti” strips to add interest.
Memory quilts of any kind are a process, and I probably need another blog post to cover the ways it can be beneficial and possibly painful. If you have memories you want to keep, though, a quilt is a brilliant place to store them!
Sending Quilting Love,
Ginger
Coming Next Time: Patience, Concentration and Precision
I am Reading: I finished Mirror Lake, and now I want to find the other books in the series…I just ordered myself some new mysteries yesterday! I will look at my local used book shops for the other Mirror Lake books. I am fifteen chapters into The Old Curiosity Shop, and I love Dickens. His ability to paint a scene and characters is superb. The Old Curiosity shop is my daily lunch companion! I have other books on the go, too…what are you reading?