Quilt As Contemporary Art

I finished a quilt for my son this week.
Without a doubt, this quilt qualifies as the worst one I’ve ever made.
It’s the first time I ever made a quilt on the sewing machine and I discovered that my machine refuses to sew through more than five layers of fabric. Who knew? So, already, I have to go back and repair by hand all the places where seams are supposed to come together.
All of which just goes to show you that boys and girls are different because my son is perfectly thrilled with it.
It is the only quilt I’ve ever made from left over t-shirts. My son’s favorite old t-shirts were so worn out that I had to first patch the holes in shirts before I could use them, thus giving the term “patch work quilt” an ironic truth.
The good news is that when he throws it over his bunk at camp, I don’t have to worry about it getting holes in it.
“Oh good, I’ll get to use your machine!” he answered when I suggested he could create a pillowcase out of the leftover camo print fabric I used as binding.
What is it about boys that they are thrilled with anything that has a motor?
Nobody sent him the memo that sewing is for girls. I suspect that he views the foot petal as the accelerator.
It’s just a good thing I have extra machine needles in my sewing basket because he will drive that machine at full throttle for the whole stretch of every seam.
I used to be more of a quilt snob. In my mind, all true quilts had to be hand-stitched in the finest American frontier tradition, in front of the fire place in the winter, of course. Very picturesque. Never mind that the TV was entertaining me the whole time I worked.
That was, until I discovered store-bought quilts in the 80s when Chinese imports first hit American markets in full force. My friend fussed at me for supporting Chinese worker maltreatment. But I’m pretty sure that Chinese women and children wanted to make the quilts I bought. I could tell by the meticulous stitches, lovingly worked into their designs.
To me, the work of Chinese women diligently caring for their families seems like the perfect tribute to an American Art form developed on the prairie by resourceful women of another era.
Using old t-shirts, I tip my hat to our ancestors, creating a contemporary art form to wrap lovingly around a happy camper. Contemporary art tends to be a little strange anyway, right?

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at http://checklistcharlie.blogspot.com or cathykrafve@gmail.com.