Quilting has been on my mind lately. A friend recently kindly offered to create a table runner from my late husband’s shirts.  I gamely suggested I might be the one to hand quilt it.

But after my experience with the 1914 Double Irish Chain family quilt that has just appeared, I may have to change my mind.

After I identified the pattern and learned that my great-great-grandmother had pieced the quilt to give to her daughter on her wedding day, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea.

Why not gather family members to finish the actual quilting? We showed off the striking piece of craftsmanship at the family picnic on Labor Day Weekend. After a few oohs and ahhs, a couple of relatives volunteered to help sew. So last week, I hosted the inaugural family quilting bee.

It took some brainwork to prepare.

First, there was the physical layout of the room to consider. I suppose in a cabin or simply furnished farm home, converting the main room into a quilting parlour would be commonplace. Maybe the woman even had a frame rigged up to lower from the rafters. 

I’d declined the offer of a quilting frame, thinking that using oversized embroidery-type hoops would allow us each to control an area of the quilt  and still leave space to maneuver in the room. I figured if I removed the coffee table and pulled the loveseat over to face the couch, we could simply hold the quilt on our laps between us.

Then, there was the crucial minutiae that supported quilting. Each person needed an appropriately-sized needle, a spool of white thread, and tiny scissors placed close at hand on end tables in the living room. The placement was critical: I didn’t want Miss Eliza The Dog Miller, as my youngest son refers to her, to find an errant needle with her paw or nose.

Then I had to consider the specifics of the work itself. I had created baby quilts for three of the kids years ago and felt fairly conversant in how it was done, even though I’d given away my quilting hoop and stand, swearing I’d never do it again.

But I had common sense. Or so I thought.

I began reasoning. Completing a half-finished job meant we would need to replicate thread color and layers.  We also would need to consider the number of stitches per inch that had been taken by my grandmother, who’d inherited the piece before giving it to my mother. 

That was the first hint to my needing more than common sense.

I’d not even thought of stitch size until my quilter friend shared her experience trying to match the stitches of an uncompleted quilt. Oh, well! I thought. That would have to evolve as each of us put our hand to needle and thread. I imagined, as we worked to follow the seemingly-random pencil lines on the orange and white squares, we would use the nearby stitches as models.

And we did.

Trouble was, my eyes are thirty-plus years older than when I was hand-stitching baby quilts. And after cataract surgery, one eye has close vision and one has far, so threading a needle was practically impossible. As my thread missed the eye time and time again, I felt like I was in a cartoon, not a historical home.

Then there was the hoop size: My sister and I tugged at the quilt and bumped elbows as we each muscled our giant hoops trying to make the work go faster but more uniform.

Nearby, our mother sat keeping us accountable. “How many stitches per inch are you using?” she wanted to know.  “When do you think you’ll finish?”

All of this meant that we grumbled and sweated and worked for about an hour. Maybe less, truthfully.

The task wasn’t nearly as easy, nor as quick, as I’d envisioned.

We didn’t have enough skill to gossip, much less even chat as we sewed! It took all our concentration to create straight, uniform stitches without drawing blood and staining the pristine orange and white squares.

In short: It wasn’t much fun.

It was kind of like the CIvil War reenactment gig my sister went on as a guest years ago. Afterward, she reported, “We just had to sit around in heavy dresses and sweat all day long. The guys got to have all the fun!”

In our defense, all I can say is that our ancestors had much more practice at the quilting racket. And like everything, practice makes perfect… or at least better.

So one of these days, we’ll try again, and like the girls of olde, we will persevere, sweaty garments and all. 

Or we’ll give up and leave the quilt to be finished by our descendents in another hundred years!