{"id":946,"date":"2023-01-25T09:27:09","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T18:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=946"},"modified":"2023-01-25T09:44:48","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T18:44:48","slug":"seventies-music-and-a-patchwork-quilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=946","title":{"rendered":"Seventies music and a patchwork quilt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blogger’s note: this is a post from an earlier time! I took it down on accident, so here it is back again!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, that\u2019s my dress from fifth grade!\u201d Scene: my sisters and I are looking over one of the many crazy quilts that our mother made during her life. Her method was simple. First, she needed the right number of cotton squares cut from old sheets. (It was important that she kept these sheets on a high shelf in her closet until she needed them, because if she left them in the hall closet, we kids would tear them up into strips so we could play field medic. Also, we always knew when we had accidentally gotten hold of a good sheet, because we had to work extra hard to tear it up.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, she would make these squares, and then bring out her collection of scraps. These included leftovers from dresses and blouses that she made for us, and the remnants of retired clothing. In applique-ing the scraps to the squares, she subconsciously used an artist\u2019s technique known as asymmetrical balance, something I aspire to in my own projects. When all the squares were thus covered with various colors, sizes, and shapes, she would sew them together, and add the quilt backing. After tacking the front to the back, she would embroider selected seams. It was during projects like this that I learned the feather stitch and the French knot. Each scrap had a story behind it; my fifth-grade dress, dark blue with letters of the alphabet in white; Mary\u2019s dress for cotillion; Laura\u2019s purple something-or-other.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here I am, sliding on into my seventh decade, taking time off from worrying about my cat to make some quilts of my own. I haven\u2019t tried my mother\u2019s method yet. What I am doing now is making a great many small rectangles out of light cotton and sewing them into larger rectangles which I enjoy referring to as \u201csummer quilts.\u201d The idea came to me from one such quilt that my Aunt Helen gave me many years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I sew, I am listening to music from the seventies, a decade that I never really advanced beyond, musically speaking. Why would I? It\u2019s an oddly unsettling combination of the old and the new: practicing the ancient art of quilting on an electric machine, and while listing to vintage rock-and-roll on a smart phone. It reminds me suddenly of my mother wandering about the house singing the chorus to the Eagles\u2019 \u201cLyin\u2019 Eyes,\u201d no doubt having no idea whatsoever what it was about but loving the sound of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m told that I look like her. She taught me to sew on a foot-treadle machine and helped move my grandparents\u2019 Victrola out of the way so my sisters and I could set up our new turntable and listen to John Denver and Glen Campbell. She was a conduit between the past and the future; perhaps I can be something of the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For your further edification:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lyin\u2019 Eyes Eagles lyrics – Bing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogger’s note: this is a post from an earlier time! I took it down on accident, so here it is back again! \u201cHey, that\u2019s my dress from fifth grade!\u201d Scene: my sisters and I are looking over one of the many crazy quilts that our mother made during her life. Her method was simple. First, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[110,409,410],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-powhatan-to-alaska","tag-music","tag-quilting","tag-rock-and-roll"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1302,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/1302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}