45. East Meets West

Seattle's Asian Arts Museum has a lovely Art Deco facade, part of which is pictured on the left. This locale was the site of my older son's wedding a mere 11 months after his younger brother had been married. This time I wasn't asked to make a quilt. That, of course, didn't stop me.

Theirs was to be a Seattle wedding and a Seattle life, so it was natural that a Seattle building serve as inspiration for the curvilinear designs in the quilt. But a bit of our east coast life had to be included too; the background for the facade-inspired motifs was pieced in crazy-patch fashion from vintage family linens and laces, including pieces of a crocheted tablecloth I had begun (and abandoned) early in my own marriage. The lustrous gray-green dupioni silk used in the curved designs was chosen to reference the metalwork tracery of the front of the museum.

Contrast without conflict was a theme here: the quilt is of the east and west coasts; it unites former generations with the newest family members; it features stitching made possible by a technologically sophisticated sewing machine as well as lots of old-fashioned hand quilting. The hand work couldn't be finished in time for the wedding, so the quilt was presented and then brought home to be completed. It has taken more than two years of additional stitching, partly because my hands aren't getting any younger and partly because the piece just seemed to call for loads of handwork to complement the beautiful crocheted and embroidered laces worked by previous generations of women. Every stitch taken has reminded me of my love for two wonderful people beginning a life together, and so the quilt has been a joy to work on--but will also, speaking less sentimentally, be a joy to finally finish.

Like the quilt, this post has been a long time coming. As they say, "life happens," and an awful lot of it has been happening lately. Silence has offered solace and time to find my way back to work, and in the interim I have found a certain peace--as well as amazement, because I couldn't possibly be that old--in seeing a new crop of quilters coming along poised to enjoy the next resurgence of this craft. Some are doing fresh, intricate and skillful work that speaks of and to a new generation with new ideas, new goals, new energy, new fabrics.

I, on the other hand, am still trying to use up the fabrics I already have, working within the constraints of former choices. Tied to, if not always bound by, my own generation's imagery, I sense the problem when I shop for clothes: new styles are too young, but clothes for people "my age" are off the mark. In my quilts, at least, I want to unite my impulse to conserve and reflect on the past with my desire to embrace the future. It's a balancing act to welcome what is genuinely new even while recognizing that much of what is hailed as "new" is simply the old coming around again. On the one hand, it would be tempting to scoff at the never-ending, outlandish reinvention of the wheel, and on the other, too easy to embrace the outdated but comfortably familiar.

That leaves me thinking that a reinvention of me, and not the wheel, is the way to go. As friends who have quilted for years begin to knit, to learn book arts, to challenge themselves in new pursuits, I've wondered why I haven't felt called to do the same. But for me the reinvention has taken a different form: in the dialog between old and new, I am now growing comfortable in the vintage crazy-patch background, a bit faded, a bit eccentric, but still speaking.