My First Community Quilt

Recently, my dear friend and midwife, The Swede, decided to come home for a visit from Sweden to prepare for the birth of her second child.  After my New Moon Sisters and I made plans for a motherblessing, I had a crazy, harebrained idea.  And who loves harebrained ideas late at night more than I do?  The Snail, of course!  I called her and shared my idea of making a baby quilt for the blessing.  I’ve always wanted to make a community quilt, a quilt made by many hands.

Since many of our friends do not sew, we decided to keep it simple.  Each friend placed her hand print on a square of fabric, and left it with me.  I pieced the top, then passed it to The Visionary for some paint embellishment.  She is such a talented artist and her work really unified the whole top and transformed it from simple hand prints to an exquisite work of art.  The Visionary then passed it to The Snail for quilting.  Her machine stippled quilting is so beautiful.   I then received the quilt for the binding.  Lastly, I hand sewed a label on the back bearing everyone’s name and the date, along with a beautiful passage from Healing Wise Woman by Susan S. Weed, that The Swede has read at many motherblessings:

I see the wise woman.  She carries a blanket of compassion.  She wears robes of wisdom.  Around her throat flutters a veil of shifting shapes.  From her shoulders, a mantle of power flows.  A story band encircles her forehead.  She stitches a quilt; she spins fibers into yarn; she knits; she sews; she weaves.  She ties the threads of our lives together.  She forms a web of spiraling threads: our lives invented and shared.

I see the wise woman at her loom: a loom warped with days of light and nights of dark.  White threads, black threads receive the flying shuttle.  A shuttle filled with threads of many colors.  Threads like the colors of the earth, the common ground; threads of the colors of the people of the earth.  Some threads are short; some threads are long; each thread is different, each perfect and splendid.  The threads are alive with sound and color.  The threads are mutable; they change at a touch.  The threads are crystal antennae; they respond at a thought.

And intertwined with each thread, a thread blood red, a thread of such sensitivity, it seems invisible, a thread of such vitality, it can never be hidden.  As our blood flows over and under the days and nights of our lives and binds each moment to the whole, so the red thread of the wise woman binds us in the tapestried, cosmic web, holds us in our variety, spirals lovingly around us, claims us again at death.

I see the wise woman.  And she sees me.

I cannot believe we managed to pull this off in a matter of six days.  After the quilt was presented to the mother-to-be, her hand print was added in the top square.

The best part of this project was the mindful sewing that I try to do when I make an object with a specific purpose like this.  Sewing for babies has to be about the best kind of sewing there is.  As I stitch, I like to think about the baby that will be swaddled in my work.  It is so lovely to know that your loving stitches will warm the bodies, hearts, and souls of others.

You can also see this quilt blogged about here, and the actual motherblessing itself here.