understory quarterly winter 2021

When you are depressed, make a quilt.
Rachel Wallis
When you find yourself in a morass of depression yet again, when you struggle to get out of bed or reply to
emails, or imagine a future when life might feel worth living again, you should make a quilt. It doesn’t have to be
a fancy quilt, and you don’t have to go out and buy new fabric or tools (although you can, obviously, if you’d like.)
Generally though, you should make a quilt from what you have on hand, whether that’s fabric or scraps, or old
jeans and button down shirts. Find a simple classic quilt block, and just start making it. Log cabin is perhaps the
easiest and best suited for this purpose. Although connected in the American imagination to the civil war and
Lincoln’s humble birthplace, the design can be found woven into the wrappings on mummified cats discovered
in pharoh’s tombs, and its sim
plicity belies endless variations in its construction and designs.
Cut your fabric into two inch strips. You can cut all of it, or some of it, or cut strips as you go - whatever feels
right to you. It doesn’t matter how long they are, they will all get used somehow. Start with a two by two inch
square in the center and start sewing strips to the sides of it and squaring them off. Don’t think too hard about
the colors you choose. Let your lizard brain decide for you as your hand touches each strip of fabric. It is either
right or wrong, and once you have chosen it, don’t second guess. Any number of small bad decisions will sink
into the overall rightness of a quilt and disappear completely. Don’t let that slow you down. Build your block out
into a spiral until it seems big enough and set it aside. Start another block.
Fall into a rhythm of cutting, choosing, sewing, ironing, trimming, over and over again. You can move your iron
and cutting mat next to your sewing machine, but maybe don’t bother. Getting up and walking back and forth,
back and forth between the iron and the sewing machine will be good for you - it’s the most exercise you’ve had
in days or weeks. Leave some tv on in the background. Star Trek or Law and Order or ER. Something that you’ve
seen so many times you don’t have to look or listen, that will flow together into a comforting murmur and keep
you company as you work.
Stop when you feel done, or you need to eat, or you’ve worked for hours and are cold and a little bit disoriented
about how long you’ve been sewing and what time it is. It doesn’t matter how much time you work, but you
should try to work a little every day. If you can’t, be kind to yourself about it. But if you can, cut a few strips or
sew a block together before you go back to bed.
Keep plugging away at your quilt until your pile of blocks seems big enough, or until your pile of fabric is gone,
or until you have a person to give it to and you should probably finish it. You can’t really rush a quilt. They
develop in their own time, and they are finished when they are finished. It doesn’t really matter how big it becomes.
It could be a pillow or a table runner or a lap quilt or a king sized bed quilt. Any number of blocks is the
right number to make something. What’s important is the process. That each day you are making incremental
progress. When everything in your life has ground to a halt, and you feel like you’re sinking into the earth while
everyone around you is moving forward, you can look at your pile of blocks and know that you produced something,
that your hands added another small piece into something bigger than you.
When your quilt top tells you it’s done decide on the back. Don’t stress over it. Cut up an old sheet or piece
together your leftover fabric until you have a square that is big enough. No one will be looking at the front and
the back at the same time. It doesn’t matter if they go together. They can each sing their own song. Gather your
batting. Pre-cut cotton batting is easiest, and easy is what we’re going for here, but you can use an old wool blanket,
or rags, or newspaper, or gather and dry spanish moss from the trees around your house like the elder quilter
I knew in New Orleans did as a child to stuff her mother’s quilts. Baste your quilt. Walk around it as you pin or
sew and think about the fabric as you touch it. Think about how each piece came into your life, how the colors
make you feel, and where they are going when they leave your hands.
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Image credit: Rachel Wallis
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