Helen Kelley - Loose Threads: Stories to Keep Quilters in Stitches

STORIES TO KEEP
QUILTERS IN STITCHES

H ELEN K ELLEY

Voyageur Press

First published in 2008 by Voyageur Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 400 First Avenue North, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

Copyright 2008, 2010 by Helen Kelley
Hardcover edition published in 2008. Digital edition 2010.

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Digital edition: 978-1-61673-806-8
Hardcover edition: 978-0-7603-3203-0

Editor: Margret Aldrich
Designer: Jennie Maass
On the cover: Wednesday Keeps Us in Stitches Sandi Wickersham, detail

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelley, Helen, 1927

Loose threads : stories to keep quilters in stitches / Helen Kelley.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7603-3203-0 (plc w/ jkt)

1. QuiltingUnited StatesMiscellanea. 2. PatchworkUnited StatesMiscellanea. 3. QuiltsUnited StatesMiscellanea. I. Title.
TT835.K46155 2008
746.460973--dc22
2008000359

Some bits of fluff tied together with a few loose threads, dedicated especially to you from me. HLK

Preface

I remember the incident very clearly. I was hunched over the copy machine in the office supplies store, concentrating, playing with designs for a twelve-inch friendship quilt block. I enlarged shapes, cut them out and rearranged them. Suddenly, I was aware of a hand moving softly across my back. The hand wandered. It stroked; it plucked. I spun around to face the woman standing behind me.

What are you doing? I asked, bewildered.

She was embarrassed.

Oh, she said, I was just picking the loose threads off of the back of your shirt.

Later, thinking about those loose threads, I realized how much a part of me they are. Those loose threads are always with me, following me everywhere. They are the little bits and pieces of things that litter my clothes and my life. They are the shreds of every day things and parts of all that happen to me. I am a hand-quilter and in the hours I spend at my quilt frame, I work quietly, stitching inch by inch. While I am stitching, my mind plays games. It looks back over the moments of each day, wandering and wondering. These mental meanderings are my loose threads. They are thoughts about the people around me. They are about daily comings and goings. They are about pattern possibilities and color choices. Because I am lucky enough to love this quilting that I do, these loose threads fill my thoughts with joy and curiosity and laughter, and I write them down.

Sometimes I write about my family. In earlier times it seemed as if I worked overtime to keep the five children fed, washed, ironed, mended, and healthy. Now they are all grown up and gone away, but thanks to the miracle of cell phones, I hear from them regularly so that I can follow their lives. As I sit and stitch, I sort out the length and breadth of their activities. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren seem to have come along in steady succession and because I have vowed to make a really unique quilt for each of them, some of my thoughts are about inventing new ways to capture their special memories in fabric. This bevy of peoplemy children, grandchildren, and greatsinspire me with their surprising energy and creative productivity. However, the very best thing in my life is my husband, Bill, who encourages me to write down my musings as they flutter through my head. Quilters Newsletter began printing these rambling thoughts years ago in their magazine. These good friends were the first to dub them Loose Threads.

Sometimes my loose threads are about the absurdities that I find lurking in my regular routine. I know that I have a quirky sense of humor, and stuck doors, spilled breakfast cereal, and trips to the fabric store often strike me as very funny. Our lives, yours and mine, are a tapestry of minor moments and I have learned to look at them, laugh at them, and love them. For instance, we have a congregation of squirrels that gather in our yard to cavort and chatter in our walnut trees. As I stand in my workroom early in the morning drinking my first cup of coffee, I watch them from my window. One squirrel has made himself a shallow basin in the dirt beneath the forsythia bush. He is a strange creature, probably mad, because as I watch, he somersaults gleefully in this grassy pit that he has made. I watch his little bottom and his feet fly up and over his ears. Around and around he tumbles. He is exuberant. What ridiculous exhilaration! I relate to that joy because it is so much like the unfettered pleasure I experience when I am feeling fabric, letting it slide through my fingers, watching it change colors in the clear light and discovering grand new ways to stitch it together into fanciful gardens or geometric puzzles. My mind does joyful gymnastics, too, and when I write it about it, it becomes a Loose Threads essay.

Sometimes, my thoughts are spun from my friendships. Quilters are interesting people, and I am grateful to them for enriching my life. I write about them, and when I put it down on paper, it too becomes a Loose Thread.

Sometimes there are brief moments in all of our lives, flashes of discovery and wonder. Finding a rainbow in the sky is a moment of illumination, seeing the colors playing against the depth of the deep purple on one side and blazing with sunshine on the other. All that translucent color has such potential. Marveling at it, I make a trip to the fabric store where I play with reds and purples and yellows to make my own rainbow. The awe I feel as I watch a rolling wave, a darting bird, or the breathless silence of a sunset makes me pause to marvel about miracles. These thoughts spin about in my head and I write about them. They become Loose Threads.

The evening news, a snarled sewing machine, and the local quilt show are all cob-webby notions and mental bits of floss. They are the fiber of my life and I weave them into stories. The wonder of it is that I am an ordinary person, a typical quilter. The fabric of my days is much the same as yours; you and I have so much in common. We share the frantic activity of daily challenges and quiet triumphs. Whether you are a quilter or an appreciator, a lover of beautiful things, you know exactly what I mean, and so I have written down these Loose Threads especially for you.